


A Horse Named Rabbit

by Deejaymil



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: (technically Hotch is a bisexual bounty hunter), Alternate Universe - Western, Bounty Hunters, Cowboy AU, Emily's in PANTS, GASP, Gay Cowboys, Horse Rustling, Lost and Found and then Lost again, M/M, Melodrama, Mutual Pining, Non-Canonical Character Death, Reid's had a very bad childhood, Romance, Sexual Content, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-24 15:56:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16178345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: Aaron Hotchner is riding West on a borrowed horse, hiding the man he used to be behind a shortened name and a beard he only sometimes thinks of shaving. His desire to keep on running until he hits the setting set is waylaid by an unexpected meeting with a man on a mule who says he's looking for his lost luck.When they part, Hotch realises that's a mistake. There's something about Spencer Reid that reminds him that he's more than just a man on a horse going nowhere—that he was once the kind of person who could help a stranger find what he's looking for. There's just one problem with that.When Spencer had said he was looking for his luck, he’d never mentioned that he planned to steal it.





	1. A Man Upon A Borrowed Horse

**Author's Note:**

> Bingo bango bongo fill for the squares ‘wildcard (cowboy AU)’, ‘rope kink’, ‘romantic forehead kissing’, ‘death-defying (smutty) act’, ‘sickfic’, ‘soup’, and ‘mutual pining’.

He’s three years out of the Capital, planning to ride West on a borrowed horse and followed by the ghost of George Foyet. The road he’s travelling is kinder than the one he’s fleeing despite the fact that the further he gets away from any kind of civilisation, the less road he actually finds. But that suits him just fine.

Hotch has always been the kind of man to forge his own path in life, even if he doesn’t know where that path is eventually taking him. For tonight, he knows it’s leading him to a somewhat comfortable bed and a hot meal served by a pretty barmaid that’s going to remind him of Haley in all the most painful ways, bought and paid for by money he’s earned working with his hands like his father always tried to beat into him. Maybe the barmaid will flirt and wink, maybe she’ll offer him a bath for no extra cost and a bed warmer for just a smile; he doesn’t know for sure, but he knows how he’ll answer if she does. Accept the bath, because he’s in a tired suit that doesn’t match his dusty demeanour and decline the warming. He likes his bed cold, likes it alone. It’d take something damn strange to change that.

And it’s as simple as this: “Sorry, ma’am,” he’ll say with a shadow of his former smile under the beard he only sometimes thinks of shaving. “I’m a happily married man.”

It’s not really a lie, except in all the ways it could be argued that it is, if one had a mind to argue. Hotch doesn’t have the mind. What’s the good of arguing specifics? Words haven’t helped him since the night Foyet took everything from him, slashing a knife right through the gilded life of the educated government man, Aaron Hotchner, with his pretty wife and his sharp-as-a-tack son and their little house on the corner.

Now he’s just Hotch. Just Hotch, and that’s how he introduces himself, hiding the Aaron that he used to be behind a beard that protects him as he keeps on riding this borrowed horse. It probably had a name, once. Rossi’s the kind of man to name his animals. Hotch isn’t. It gets him from point A to point wherever he’s going and he’s kind to it in return. That’s life now.

If they press, and sometimes they do when his pouch of coins is getting light and he needs to money to feed the mare or himself, he tells them he’s an ex-lawman. That gets him some grudging respect in the quarters he needs it, though he suspects that respect may fade the further West he goes. Out there, the law isn’t what it is in DC. His college degrees and lawyer’s words won’t help him there, but that’s tomorrow’s problem.

Today, he’s just a tired man on a borrowed horse, needing feeding and a bath. There’s no point thinking about tomorrow, or yesterday. Neither have ever done anything for him.

 

* * *

 

He has three guns because his mama was the suspicious sort, always telling him that anything designed to keep him alive needs to come in parts of three. If it’s rigging, check it thrice. If it’s a horse, don’t go riding for your life on it until you’ve had three years of wearing in that saddle. If it’s a gun, carry three: the Winchester rifle slung across his back is both an open warning that he’s carrying and the gun he checks in with the law in the towns who don’t want armed strangers on their streets; the Colt under his shirt is what he uses if pushed and gives up if people, correctly, assume he’s the kind of man to carry insurance; and the derringer in his pocket has never been aimed at a human and he figures is the one most likely to save his life because of that.

All three are cleaned, maintained, loaded, and he knows all their quirks. He’s a ready man, a careful man, and a silent one. This comes as a surprise to no one; the one thing Hotch is, besides reliable, is silent.

When he takes the job with the stagecoach taking a load of rich passengers from Connecticut up to the Nevada boomtowns, he’s using those three parts of himself. That’s what the driver wants beside him, he figures, since the horses pulling the coach are strong and well-bred, the coach itself made of a fine oak, the people inside dressed pretty with nice faces. Ripe for banditry, and there’s a part of him that bites down at that idea as he applies for the position of ride-along guard-for-hire, his eyes on the small boy in a fine suit watching the horses longingly. They need help. He’s got all the time in the world to give it.

“Wouldn’t mind another hand on the road,” he says absently when asked his opinion on how many guards they should take along, the driver new to this long road and nervous. The railroad doesn’t go that far, not yet, and Hotch hears the father scorn the idea anyway as newfangled and dangerous. “Any more than that and you’ll be paying out more than you’re earning.”

Guns aren’t cheap, and neither are trustworthy men. Hotch hopes this driver knows that.

In the end, he guesses he’ll find it out because he leaves Connecticut the sole man left to keep this family safe, riding behind their coach on his borrowed horse and eyes sweeping the surroundings. But he’s sure he can manage it. After all, bandits are no George Foyet and he won’t lose another boy.

 

* * *

 

It’s a planned five months on the road with stops at homesteads that the family know. They’re relocating for a better life, a monumental undertaking across this vast land, and Hotch appreciates that they understand that sometimes home isn’t where you started. For the first three weeks of their travels, they invite him to dine with them on most noon meals and he can’t shake his manners well enough to decline them. The invitations cease after that, Hotch suspects because, when he can be pressed into talking by shows of kindness and glimpses of the life he used to have, he’s a soft-spoken, clearly educated man with the same eyes that lured Haley in—and this family has a daughter of flirting age with the whims of an unbroken yearling. Her seat around the fire inches closer with every night that passes until he’s pretty sure she’s planning to lasso and break him like a steer, serving him up to her father with a jaunty smile and a, “This one please, Papa.”

After that, he keeps his distance when she’s making eyes, only breaking that rule when the boy—he’s five and Hotch wishes he could learn what Jack would be at that age—asks to be put upon the borrowed horse and led around the campsite, or taught how to skin an apple with the little knife his grandpa gave him before they left Connecticut. At night, when the family prays, Hotch keeps watch over them and doesn’t close his eyes, but in his mind he follows along with every hymn. Someone has to be watching out here, it just doesn’t feel right that the world could be so empty.

Five weeks in, two men surprise the daughter as she chases a rabbit, too silly to realise the danger she’s putting herself in. Hotch runs them off, but it’s a close thing and she’s lucky he was near to hear her scream. If he wasn’t alone, he’d have kept on chasing them—no man bold enough to stalk a girl on the outskirts of her family’s fire is one that deserves to be outside a lawman’s grasp—but he _is_ alone and so he stays.

“You’ll get a bonus at the end,” says the shaken father to Hotch once assured of his daughter’s intact virtues. “Horses, gold, a property. Whatever you want for saving my girl.”

“How about another hand on the road?” is all Hotch asks, avoiding acknowledging the way the girl now stares at him like he’s no longer a fancy cut of meat: now there are stars in her eyes and the giggles have been replaced by deep-seated blushes. Despite the trouble he knows is coming there, he never begrudges her her life.

And the father sees to it that another man is found, although the quality of that man has much to be assured.

 

* * *

 

They’re staying at a ranch perched on the edge of a sparely scrubbed plain, dotted with cattle that Hotch has no idea what to do with. He spends a couple of hours trying to help the ranchers because he doesn’t like sitting on his ass waiting for things to happen, before admitting defeat when it comes to livestock and riding back to see if there’s anything that needs done around the house. Fixing houses he’s good at, despite how much it kicks to remember how him and Haley had worked so hard to turn their shabby house into a home. Gutters and piping and digging gardens any minute he wasn’t reciting law…

A lump in his throat, he walks into the busy kitchens to find a boy already sitting there being fussed over by the help, an awkward silence falling when they turn and note him there. The boy is whipcord slim wearing a stained single-breasted vest with a narrow necktie and trousers that had once been fine but are now creased to high hell and marked by things unmentionable. Hotch slings his hands into his pockets and eyes the stranger, noting his shoes that are clearly too big and his eyes that are the same shape as a rabbit’s when it sees the fox despite being hidden behind crooked glasses and an overlong wave of shabby curls. All of that culminates in a sharp face and bow-shaped lips that immediately draw the eye, and Hotch would suspect a boy this pretty is here for carnal reasons with the staff if it wasn’t for the fact that he’s clearly been beaten to high hell.

“He needing a quack?” Hotch asks, nodding to the boy who’s seventeen if he’s a day. “I’ll ride into town for one.”

“I don’t have money for a doctor,” the boy lisps out around those sinful lips all split and swollen, rabbit eyes narrowing warily. “If I could please beg some food, I promise I can work the cost back. That’s all I need.”

He doesn’t look the begging type, unless that once-nice waistcoat he’s wearing is stolen or he’s a once-privileged man fallen on contemporary hard times.

“He really can’t be here,” someone whispers, eyes nervously glancing to the inner door. “We could all get fired…”

The boy visibly deflates, one shoulder folding in as the other sits stiffly in its socket. “I’ll go,” he says thickly. “I’m sorry to have been a bother. Thank you for the water and the care.” And, with a white hankie pressed to the worst of the cuts above his eyes, he gets up—surprisingly tall, he’s within an inch of Hotch’s six feet—and limps determinedly past Hotch and out into the yard.

He’s a boy in need of help, and Hotch has never been good at saying no. Of course, he follows.

“What’s your name?” he asks, catching the boy easily before he even makes it to the side gate where there’s a cold-eyed mule hitched to a post and watching them both approach with its teeth bared. Hotch eyes it carefully, noting the upper length of the tail where the fur has been previously shaved and is now growing back. “That’s not your animal.”

“Yes, he is.” The boy turns on him, trying to look stern despite swaying on his feet. “He’s not stolen. I have his deed—and if you try take him from me, he’ll buck you. Won’t you, Jack?”

The mule makes a whimpering noise, baring its teeth again and blowing air in Hotch’s general direction.

“I don’t doubt that thing bites,” Hotch says. “But he’s a military animal, and you’re no army brat. Not with that limp.” He’s been beaten to hell, but the limp is deep-set. It’s learned, not new, and the boy moves like he’s used to having one leg gammy.

The boy doesn’t wince, just leans against the fence with his shoulder alarmingly close to those yellowed teeth. The mule seems to consider biting him, although it finally just settles on wiping more gunk onto the sleeve of his shirt instead. There’s so much dirt on it already, Hotch doubts it even really matters. “Won him playing cards,” he says finally, his voice low. “Are we going to have a problem? I should warn you, I’m armed and a very good shot.”

That’s clearly a lie, on both parts. He’s a dog with no bite trying to bark away the boot, and it should be amusing but instead it just pisses Hotch off. Not angry with the kid—but angry that he’s here begging food with a mule he got by chance, in boots ill-fitting enough that his feet are definitely bleeding. He’s used to life being cruel to him; he still gets angry when it’s cruel to others.

“You’re dead on your feet,” he says finally, not calling the man out on his unarmed status. “I have dried meat, some rations. A warm fire you can sleep by for a night, at least.”

“What do you want in return?”

“Just your name, and your age.”

The boy looks at him, suspicion giving way to disbelief. “Why my age?” he asks.

And Hotch, with a single moment of noting to himself that this is the last thing he needs if he’s genuinely sure a friendly and competent gun at his back is all that’s going to get them West, ignores all his good sense and says, “Well, I figure if you’re not a runaway kid with a father looking to drag him home, then you’re probably in need of a job. It just so happens I know someone hiring.”

The boy, after a moment of thought as he realises that this is a genuine offer that he’s too hungry to pass up, answers, “Spencer Reid. My name is Spencer Reid, and, to answer your second question, I’m twenty-two. And I’d be very grateful for your help, as would Jack.”

Hotch wishes the mule wasn’t called that.

 

* * *

 

The driver doesn’t want a bar of Reid on his payroll, but the father hears Hotch’s quiet, “He can do it,” and immediately hires him out of his own pocket, helped along by a gasped, “Daddy, you _must_ ,” from the daughter as soon as she spots Reid’s sad eyes and his pretty mouth. Hotch smiles inwardly at that; he doubts she’s going to be mooning after him anymore now that this young buck is here and needing fussing over. Seventeen is a prime age for falling in love, since Hotch still doesn’t believe Reid is twenty-two. But as far as lies go it’s a small one, so he allows it.

Three days later than planned, since the wife then gets involved and orders a doctor to begin the fussing, they leave the homestead and are on their way again, except this time Hotch and his borrowed horse have a recalcitrant mule and his over-friendly rider on their tail. With a neatly stitched brow he’s been warned not to split again if he doesn’t want scarring and a freshly un-dislocated shoulder, Reid’s surly mood improves so dramatically as soon as they’re moving and he has food in his belly that Hotch is beginning to understand why someone beat him up. He talks constantly but says very little of importance, just rambles about plants and mules and types of dirt until Hotch’s ears are ringing and he’s wishing for bandits to shut the man up. And the entire time the boy is talking, he’s watching Hotch with hopeful eyes, like he wants a pat on the head and a ‘good boy’ for knowing exactly how many tines the type of salt bush they’re riding past has.

When he’s not talking, he’s slouching so dangerously in the saddle with a book in his hand and his eyes off the road that Hotch has to grit his teeth against scolding him for riding stupidly. All knees and soft hands, the boy is lucky that Jack seems to have taken a liking to Hotch’s borrowed horse because the only thing keeping him on track is the mule following his mare. Unfortunately, it also means that Reid barely has control over it, which gets Hotch bitten by the horrible creature more often than it does Reid.

A week into this, Hotch snaps.

“Get off my ass and do your job to earn the food we’re wasting on you,” he growls, Reid jolting out of a daydream and nodding quickly, yanking the reins and pissing the mule off as he looks around trying to see what he should be doing. Finally, he seems to realise that, since their job currently solely consists of being there and watching for trouble, what Hotch actually means is ‘please go away’.

He does, riding awkwardly to the other side of the coach and following behind the wheels, in danger of his mule getting rocks flicked into his face but seemingly unaware of this. Hotch only wonders for a minute why he chose _there_ to ride, right up until he sees a head poking out the back window and realises the daughter has taken advantage of Reid’s willingness to communicate. It’s what Hotch expected but he finds that it pisses him off too, riding West with his mood declining with every new smile Reid manages. He’s not sure he likes this boy, even if he doesn’t regret taking the chance with him.

And he’s sure Reid will move on soon enough.

 

* * *

 

At night, they share a campfire. Despite being terrible at riding with his janky leg giving all kinds of wrong signals to the stubborn mule and still having failed to produce the gun that he swears he carries, Reid is decent enough at making a fire so the job of that falls to him. On the night that Hotch bags two rabbits with his Colt, Reid also skins and prepares them without a word, Hotch returning from sharpening his knife to find the job done and the rabbits already cooking. Reid’s such a strange mix of abilities and inabilities that Hotch simply doesn’t know what to do with him especially as, ever since his outburst, the boy has stopped talking about things that don’t matter and Hotch kind of misses that.

“What are you looking at?” he asks him on this night, unable to sleep and with Reid keeping watch over the camp. The tents that hold the driver and the father and his son circle the coach where the women sleep in relative comfort, Hotch and Reid positioned so they can see anyone approaching their charges.

Reid’s head is tilted back, the firelight casting strange shadows on his skinny face. Glasses glinting in such a way that his eyes are obscured, making a curious figure beside the fire on the single blanket that’s all he owns besides the one he uses on his mule. He sleeps on that blanket, declining Hotch’s spare, and Hotch wonders what he’ll do now the weather is turning cold—he doubts the man will take the mule’s blanket, he seems too fond of the animal.

“The stars haven’t changed,” Reid replies finally, his voice muted. “No matter how far from home I ride, they never change. That’s a comfort.” With a rustle of movement, he sits up and grabs for the tattered leather saddlebag that’s all he carries, digging through it until he pulls forth an instrument made of gleaming metal. “Look through this.” He hands it over after peering through the end for a moment and fiddling with the contraption. Hotch does as he says and looks up to where the stars are suddenly so much closer. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Very,” Hotch says, fascinating with the magnifying properties of the small hand-held telescope, of which he’s read about but never handled before. His fingers brush a small engraving on the smooth surface of the metal, lowering it from his eye and examining it in the firelight: _To my beloved Doctor, with which he may always know the stars we love ~E._ “Is this an heirloom?”

“Hmm?” Reid is looking away now, down towards the camp, and his demeanour is distracted. “No, it was a gift from a friend, some time ago. Do you see movement?”

Telescope forgotten, Hotch follows his eyeline and sees the shadows approaching just as Reid has, their campfire illuminating them. He stands, straining his ears for the hoofbeats he should be hearing—but he’s not. Which means, they’re muffling them.

“Take this,” he says, passing his revolver to Reid as shoulders his rifle. “Stay behind me and don’t let them see that you don’t know which ends goes bang. But, I’m begging you—if I start shooting, shoot too. We’ll have seconds to surprise them before we’re gunned down.”

Reid shoots him a hurt look but doesn’t argue. Together, they walk down there, armed against the dark. Despite having a friendly gun behind him, Hotch doesn’t feel safe: friendly fire still kills, even if it’s shot with the best of intentions.

 

* * *

 

As it turns out, Reid can shoot well enough that he doesn’t shoot Hotch in the back.

That doesn’t stop Hotch getting shot.

It’s a split-second hesitation that causes it. Hotch starts shooting when he realises the men are masked and refusing to answer to the queries he’s throwing at them. Reid, however, doesn’t. He vacillates, and in that split second one comes from the left and rips a bullet through Hotch’s gun arm. Likely thinking they’ll take out the hand he shoots with, which would have worked if Hotch hadn’t long ago taught himself to shoot with both. Before they can follow up with a bullet to the head before Hotch can swap to his non-dominant right, Reid nails the one who’d shot him. The red hole in the man’s head appears neatly, Reid following up by taking out another two and looking unhappy to be doing so.

Seven bandits in all, three to Reid and the other four to Hotch. When he’s searching the bodies after, a rough bandage made of his sleeve wrapped around his arm, Hotch finds why they’d gone down shooting: they’re carrying the type of guns only lawmen tend to carry, likely taken from the bodies of said men, and they’re skinny and wasted under that. Starved and desperate, like dogs turned wolfish. Hotch knows that feeling and mourns them despite being the one to put them to their graves.

“Is there a township nearby?” he asks their team when he walks back to where the coach has moved while they wait for him to deal with the bodies. Judging from the stares he gets from the girl and boy, he looks a terrible sight. Likely splattered with blood with his hands all dirty and sweat drawing lines through the filth on his face as one of the last warm suns of the year rises overhead. “We should report their deaths. Bandits or not, men deserve burying and they likely have hungry families they were poaching for.”

“You’re bleeding too,” the father says, pointing to Hotch’s arm where he’s bled through the bandage with red dripping from his elbow. Hotch shrugs that off. He’ll either stop bleeding or he’ll die, that’s the long and short of it. “We should find a doctor.”

“Good luck out here,” the wife says coldly from where she’s been crying inside the stagecoach. “Animals, all of them.”

She doesn’t speak again, which is good because otherwise Hotch would likely have pointed out that the men they killed for them are definitely human, and he has the bodies to prove it. No matter how broken, still human.

“I have maps,” Reid says suddenly, vanishing to his bag. When he returns with maps that are indeed more updated than the ones they’re already carrying, it’s found they’re a half a day’s ride from a town nearby. A full day before someone can be sent back for the bodies, which will no doubt be coyote meat long before then.

“I’ll stay with them,” Hotch declares, letting no argument be brooked in the tone of his voice. He shakes his hand free of blood on his fingers, disliking how it’s pooled around his wedding ring, before nodding to the group. “Take your wife and children away from here with Reid on watch—send a group back with a cart for this lot and I’ll meet you there.” He might be the employee here, a nameless hire, but people listen to him. They agree, Reid silent and still armed with Hotch’s revolver. “Take my horse and gun,” Hotch tells him firmly, letting him know with his stare that he’s still pissed about Reid flinching. “And Reid?”

“Yeah?” Reid looks at him, eyes flickering to Hotch’s arm guiltily.

“If you’re attacked without me there and you hesitate again, those children will die. Remember that.”

Maybe it’s cruel, but it’s effective. Hotch reminds himself of that as Reid’s eyes widen with horror. After all, Hotch of all people knows the cost of hesitation.

They ride away, and then he’s alone.

 

* * *

 

He opens his eyes with no memory of having closed them, finding himself laid out on his bedroll with his shirt sleeve rolled right up and a cold compass on his forehead. When he tries to struggle up onto his elbows to look around, the world spins wildly and almost throws him back down to the ground. All he sees is Jack and the mare staring at him curiously from where they’re grazing, loud claps of thunder nearby startling him to his shaken bones.

“Did I die?” he asks the horses wildly, letting his head fall back as everything spins some more. His arm hurts dully, and he looks at it and blinks to find that it’s neatly bandaged.

“Almost,” says Reid. He appears overhead, looking down at Hotch with his mouth in a thin line. “Found you almost face down in the river, out cold. You didn’t even stop the bleeding.” There’s a betrayed kind of snap to his voice, like he can’t believe that Hotch would be so careless. “You could have bled out before we returned—you _would_ have, if I hadn’t ridden back.”

“Why did you ride back?” Hotch rasps, his throat dry. Reid just eyes him with that same hurt stare before vanishing and reappearing with a canteen of water and crouching to hold it to Hotch’s mouth. Hotch is so weak that, embarrassingly, he can’t even tilt his head to accept the water without choking, both gratified and shamed by the hand that Reid curls behind his head to assist.

“Was worried,” Reid murmurs, lowering the canteen but leaving his hand where it is, fingers threaded through Hotch’s hair. He’s clean-shaved, Hotch notes dazedly, despite having never seen the man take a knife to his cheeks. He’s always been clean-shaven… “Turns out I was right to be worried. I have stew cooking, and you should eat even if you don’t feel like it. Your body needs to replace what you lost.”

“You some kind of doctor?” Hotch mumbles, beginning to drift again as his arm sends louder thumps of pain slamming through his body. Remembering, suddenly, the etching on that telescope and thinking of Reid making love to his pretty wife under the stars as he teaches her the names of all the plants and animals he knows…

“I suppose,” is the soft reply as Hotch’s eyes close. “I’m good enough for what you need, anyway.” There’s a long beat of silence, then the hand slips away from Hotch’s hair and leaves him cold, coming back to tweak at his blanket. No, not his blanket… Hotch cracks open his eyes and realises he’s under Reid’s blanket too. “Hotch?”

“Hmm?” Hotch hums, still staring at the blanket and wondering what it means.

“I’m sorry I got you shot. I’ve never been much of a killer.”

“Then why are you out here?” Hotch asks him, fighting his body with stubborn determination until he can turn his head to stare Reid in his hazel, changeable eyes, a shade that Hotch is sure he hasn’t seen before and which catches him completely now. “Place will only get you killed.”

“Looking for something, same as you are,” Reid answers, sitting down beside him and looking west to where the sun sets. Hotch looks too, seeing nothing. “My luck is out there somewhere.”

“Oh, yeah?” Hotch coughs, closing his eyes again and feeling sleep pulling. Maybe he should have stopped the bleeding… “Does your luck have a name?”

As he asks this, he thinks again of that engraved _E._

But he doesn’t clearly hear Reid’s answer, sure that his brain is feverishly making it up as he drifts into a dream of two lovers beneath a starry sky—because surely the boy didn’t just answer that he’s out here risking his life looking for something called, “Rabbit.”


	2. A Boy with No Lack of Potential

After that day, things are easier between them. They ride side by side and there’s an expectation of competency from them both: Hotch knows that Reid can shoot if given reason to and Reid knows that Hotch has a death wish that makes him dangerous. Oddly, these two things work well together. Hotch decides that he’s in the perfect position to be of use to the younger man—who still insists that he’s twenty-two, despite Hotch’s open disbelief—in the way of a teacher, since it’s become apparent that Reid has no intention of heading back East to civilisation despite himself.

He begins by teaching him how to ride, because Reid is honestly a disaster on a horse’s, or a mule’s, back. That takes two weeks before Hotch is pleased with the results, two weeks of keeping a close eye on the other man’s posture and seat, eyes tracking the way his legs shift with his weight and Jack’s movements. He’s firm that the leg Reid holds strangely is no excuse for bad conduct on horseback, he just needs to learn how to utilise it—but Hotch never asks what happened to cause it, because if Reid wanted to tell him he’d have already offered the information. In that time, Reid proves himself to be a personable sort, despite his relative introversion with the family. He teaches the little boy magic tricks with a pack of cards conjured from his saddlebag and gambles with the father and only wins sometimes despite Hotch noting how skilled he is at dealing. The wife he’s demure around and the daughter he avoids, since Hotch was absolutely right about the effect those deadly cheekbones would have on her.

“Your friend, that Mr. Reid,” the father asks one day, coming up behind Hotch as he washes his canteen in a stream. “He’s an educated man. He was showing me more of his maps, and I caught a glimpse of the signature on them—they’re copies of Yale’s maps. Only students have access to those, and only those with money would have the funds to get copies.”

“Intriguing,” is all Hotch replies, because Reid doesn’t always give the impression of an educated man: clever, definitely, but of an oddball range of things with no abstract specialisation, not like the academics Hotch has met in his life. And he definitely doesn’t seem like he’s from excess money, not on a mule and with too-small boots.

“It would be interesting if he was from money, yes,” the father ponders, watching Reid get roped into helping his daughter examine one of the stagecoach horse’s shoes. Hotch watches too, some tight feeling building in his chest as the girl flushes prettily and frets over the horse, her hand on Reid’s arm. “Perhaps a doctor, which would mean the leg is no handicap, unless it’s a birth defect…”

Hotch doesn’t answer. Reid’s secrets are his own, even if those secrets would make him a very eligible match for a new family settling in with a daughter needing to be safely placed away.

“I’ll speak to him,” the father declares, stalking off with his expression thoughtful.

“You do that,” says Hotch, scrubbing his canteen harder than necessary with no idea why his mood has soured so.

 

* * *

 

Reid’s shooting is decent, but they practise together anyway on the nights they’re left to their own devices, without being called to join the family’s fireside. Hotch enjoys these nights the most as the weeks crawl blissfully on, his life feeling far behind and long ago in this moment of standing atop a ridge with his hand on Reid’s slim hip, teaching him how to stand correctly so he can follow through on his shots. Reid still carries his revolver and it looks nicer on him than it ever has on Hotch’s. Because of that, he doesn’t take it back, instead teaching him how to disassemble and clean it thoroughly, delighting in every motion of those nimble, clever hands.

In return, Reid continues teaching him the names of plants and stars and, eventually, like it’s a secret, he also begins whispering about books he’s read and loved, the names of classics from three-hundred years ago so casually dropping from his lips that Hotch is flummoxed. When Reid is bolstered by the realisation that Hotch is no longer annoyed by his knowledge but compelled by it, he’s encouraged to recite passages of his favourite verses with a hushed vigour that suggests he’s showing off just a little. Hotch doesn’t know why he feels the need to show off to a beaten-up old man like him in stained trousers and a tired duster coat, the wide-brimmed hat he sometimes wears tipped low over his shadowed eyes. Hotch is educated, sure, but that feels a long way away as well, whereas here Reid is barely fresh from whatever professor tipped his head open and filled it with dreams, so alive and awed by it all that Hotch can’t help but be awed too.

And if sometimes Hotch catches Reid watching him with just as much quiet fascination in his eyes as Hotch watches him with, well now, that’s just because they’re interested in what the other knows. Student and teacher, sometimes both, and that’s what learning’s about.

There’s a day that’s damply warm, enough that they sweat despite the chill breeze. It’s not a comfortable mix and Hotch is glad when they camp close enough to a river he can wash in. It’s been almost two months since he had a bath he’s been pleased with, so he barely waits to be excused before he’s hidden behind a bush down there stripping off and being thankful for the watery sun overhead. He’s assured of his privacy, having ascertained which area of the river the women would be using before picking his place far from it, and he intends to make full use of it.

The water is cool and fresh, joyous on dust-burned skin, and he barely scrubs himself before giving in to the desire to swim. Diving down to see how far into the river he can get, holding his breath until it burns and popping up with river grit washing off his fingers before he can emerge from the surface. For a while, he forgets his troubles and just enjoys being cool and clean, deciding that when this job is over he might settle for a bit somewhere with a swimming hole and a barber to cut his hair and shave the beard he hates as much as he’s thankful for it.

When he pops out the water again, there’s someone on the bank. For a heart-stopping second, he thinks it’s the girl and jerks his hands down to cover himself despite the water hiding him, but it’s not. Reid jumps, visibly surprised by his appearance above the water and now staring openly at him as Hotch wades closer to see what the man is doing because he’s curious: _not_ because Reid is shirtless in just his trousers, suspenders loose and pooled in his lap, tie placed neatly atop his folded clothes. He’s sitting by the riverbank, a small, cloudy mirror propped on a rock and a straight razor in hand, the bowl beside him filled with water that steams. Already boiled carefully for this scene, which is almost beautifully ritualistic.

“I didn’t even see you there,” he says as Hotch approaches, looking strangely older with his glasses off and the first shade of stubble Hotch has seen on him smudging his cheeks. Without the wobbly frames, Hotch can see the deep purple shadows under his eyes and the barest hint of lines at the corners. Whispers of age on young skin. For the first time, he thinks that maybe the boy isn’t much of a boy after all—and not lying about his age, which puts ten years between them in age instead of fifteen. And he’s not sure how he feels about that.

“I started further up the river,” Hotch admits, keeping low in the water to hide his body, for some reason not desiring Reid to see the scars he’s littered with. “Guess I swam further than I realised.”

And they don’t move for the longest moment, both staring at the other with no words to voice what either is thinking.

“If you like,” Reid murmurs suddenly, holding the razor up. “After I finish, I can, uh. Do you? If you want…” He pauses, cheeks going red. It’s much nicer on him than on the daughter. Hotch is glad for the water cooling his skin. “I don’t know if you like your beard, you might, it’s, uh, a preferred look I guess—”

“Are you saying you don’t like the beard?” Hotch interrupts, amused despite himself.

Reid’s mouth twitches into an expression Hotch doesn’t quite _get_ , wondering how to translate it into something understandable—and his next words don’t help with that task at all. “I’m more curious about the face below it than I am pleased by it,” he says in a voice that’s _also_ completely perplexing, laying the razor down as he wets a flannel cloth and leans his head back to drape it across his skin to warm it.

Unsure how he feels, Hotch answers from instinct, without knowing what he’s going to say until he says it: “Okay.” And then he’s wading from the river and finding himself standing awkwardly there, naked as a babe and glistening wet. It’s not like he’s never been around other men naked before, and it’s not like there’s anything he has to be ashamed of in front of this wet-behind-the-ears skinny-as-a-whippet boy, but… still, he frowns and struggles to find his feet as Reid lowers the cloth and does a visible double take seeing him standing there.

What he does next isn’t subtle at all. His eyes, hazel and ringed by those purple shadows, flick to meet Hotch’s as though asking permission for what comes next, seemingly finding something there that permits what he wants. His gaze drifts down, lingering on Hotch’s body so slowly and licentiously that it’s as intimate as a caress despite the distance between them, tracing every scar left by Foyet’s knife, every line of muscle from the last three years of surviving, right down until those eyes are left tracing the outline of Hotch’s dick. A muscle shifts in his jaw. He swallows, tongue flicking over lips that Hotch guesses have gone dry. Water drips from Hotch to the stones below his bare feet.

The only thing that makes the fact the Hotch isn’t _soft_ anymore even slightly tolerable is that Reid’s trousers are thin enough that it’s apparent that he isn’t either. And Aaron Hotchner’s never thought before of the temptation of lying with a man like he would a woman, but now that Hotch is standing here being studied like this… he can feel the treacherous appeal.

Finally, Reid looks away, beginning to shave with slow, meaningful swipes of the blade while Hotch watches the patterns of pink and white it leaves behind on his skin. By the time it’s Hotch’s turn to kneel before Reid with his head tipped back and that hand once more cupping the back of his head as Reid steadies him, there’s definitely nothing soft about either of them. And the blade rasps over his skin over and over, taking away the stripes of Hotch and leaving Aaron bared to the world, somehow more naked without the beard than he ever was without his clothes. The wind teases at them, Reid leaning close so he can focus without being distracted by looking down… and Hotch focuses on those lips and those eyes and wonders if kissing him would be different than Haley.

“You’re done,” Reid says suddenly, without pulling away. They’re close. Hotch can feel the other man’s breath on his raw skin, bringing his hand up to feel his smooth cheeks. “Hotch…”

They’re still close. Looking right at each other, until Hotch glances down to the mirror to see a man five years younger than he feels looking back at him like a reminder of his past… and permission for his future.

“Please,” he says, to both Reid and the man in the mirror. “Call me Aaron.”

And he doesn’t know why he said it, right until Reid does exactly what he says—murmurs _Aaron_ with those decadent lips, so sinfully shaping the word that Hotch knows this has been longer coming than just today. And he knows he’s fucked, because he’d do anything to keep hearing that voice whisper his name like that.

 

* * *

 

The desert is cold at night. They’re a week away from Aurora and, ever since the river, they spend the night times talking. Hotch learns a lot about Spencer, although he suspects not everything, and Hotch admits as much as he can about the man named Aaron. He tells Spencer that he was once a lawyer, a federal man, seeing surprise and thoughtfulness in the other man’s countenance at this reveal.

Spencer tells him about the home he misses, describing with wistfulness his cabin in a hanging valley and the path through a canyon he takes to get there, lined with aspens so high that Hotch feels like he can see it. To the location of this magical place, all Spencer will say is, “Higher than you’d believe,” and there’s a longing in his eyes when he looks around at the desert landscape around them. He admits that he grew up in Nevada, although he’d never expected to return, and he talks of the snow in winter.

“Must be nice to come home,” Hotch tells him, fiddling with the small telescope in his fingers as he tries to see a comet storm Spencer tells him is supposed to fall. “Is your luck here somewhere?”

“Mine and a million others’,” Spencer replies from where he’s playing with a length of rope, knotting it around his wrists and then working it free, refusing to say anything more about the subject even when Hotch presses curiously. He’s intimately aware of the deadline of their job coming up, the realisation that they’ll likely go their separate ways at the end of it all. It’s a crushing thought, and he pushes it away in favour of watching Spencer and the rope, even as his fingers trace the engraving on the cool metal he’s holding.

“You’ve practised with those ropes.” Hotch smirks as Spencer unties the knot easily. “Maybe I should tie you up, make it harder.”

Eagerly, Spencer kneels and looks at him, salient in the circle of firelight that’s become their nightly sanctuary from the rest of the world and their own strange feelings. Hotch wants him close, but not too close, but closer than he is—and at least in this warm circle, he can pretend he’s getting all of those things at once. “Could you?” he asks. “It’s harder to knot them successfully on myself and I’m out of practise.”

“I guess. I’m not sure I understand why, but if you want me to…” Hotch enables this flight of fancy, ushering him over to the bedroll so he’s not wriggling around on the stony ground and thinking for a moment before deciding on a good old hogtie—see if he can escape _that._ Despite his wry thought that he hopes the man can’t escape, he’s also curious to see if he _can_ , tying the knot and sitting back.

Spencer hums loudly, testing the knots as he arches back into them, eyes locked on Hotch and a small smile on his mouth. Something slams low in Hotch’s gut and stays there, something hot and violent and locked on hard to the sight of Spencer curled on the ground like that, bound tight against himself with his body bowed back like a curved blade.

“I knew a boy who used to like to tie me up and leave me for someone to find,” Spencer is saying absently while he fiddles with the ropes, writhing and twisting as he tries to get purchase. Hotch stares as his shirt untucks and rides up a bit to show a flash of skin, the tense shape to his legs visible as his pants are pulled tight against him. He’s sure it must be hurting the man’s leg, but Spencer doesn’t complain. “After a while, it became a game to see whether I was found or escaped first. After the time no one found me for fifteen hours, I got better at escaping.”

“That doesn’t sound like much of a game,” Hotch rasps out around a dry throat. His voice is blatantly deep, almost coiled, and Spencer pauses and looks at him with a searching expression, like he’s seeing right through him. “How old were you?”

“The first time? Five, I believe. Possibly earlier. The last time was when I was thirteen and… well, he didn’t do it again after that.” There’s a swift movement that Hotch doesn’t see and suddenly Spencer’s legs are free, his hands still tied behind his back as he smoothly flicks himself up onto his knees, legs spread almost seductively, his expression dark and locked on Hotch. “I think you see much more of an appeal in ropes than I do.”

Hotch swallows again, moving forward because he can’t _not_ approach that open invitation. The man is kneeling before him, hands bound, hips essentially cocked forward, and a tell-tale shape betraying him. And Hotch can’t touch, not this openly, so instead he reaches around the man in the illusion of untying him, most importantly bringing them flush together with his head almost resting on Spencer’s shoulder. They’re both breathing fast and Hotch is hard enough that one wrong move from either of them will have them becoming far more intimately acquainted than what’s right for men.

“I can’t deny I like you like this,” Hotch admits in a low growl, knowing it’s a secret but not meaning to say it like _that_ , feeling Spencer shiver against him. “But there’s a difference between him and me… I’ll never leave you vulnerable like that. Tell me what happened when you were thirteen.”

The knot comes loose and he moves away. They’re both shivering now, the cold of the desert real at night and both of them reacting to the heat of their bodies being added and removed. Hotch’s borrowed horse whickers to Jack, the mule whinnying back.

“He tied me to the outer fence of a distant enough paddock,” Spencer says finally, reaching for his blanket and wrapping it around his shoulders, a thin rain beginning to fall. “A dog found me before he came back.” But he looks away, a small muscle twitching in his jaw betraying how angry he is below the forced calm.

Hotch shudders but he’s curious in a furious way, needing to know how angry he needs to be on behalf of the smaller version of the magical man in front of him. “Show me.”

Because he knows there’s a scar from this. He knows the look of a scarred man.

Spencer does, rolling the leg of his pants up to reveal why he limps. It’s viciously scarred from the knee down where the animal had latched on to a smaller, helpless limb. Hotch can see where the fangs punctured and where it tore and kept tearing as the dog had worried at him like it would a bone.

“It’s a mercy you got away,” he says, stunned, because the scars are big on the man so they would have been horrifying on a boy.

“I screamed. I was heard. It wasn’t so bad—things were much better after that, as atonement I suppose, for me almost dying from the blood loss and being a cripple after when before I’d been promising. A familiar feeling, I’m sure.” And he’s smiling, so Hotch knows he’s not still angry about that. “And the boy who did it lost almost as much skin as I did once his father was done with the horsewhip…”

For some reason, he seems troubled by that. Hotch isn’t sure he’d have been as kind, not when he knows enough about horses to know a horse mauled like that won’t run again—and he doubts a boy would have either, not for a long time. It’s no wonder Spencer is more interested in books. Hotch doubts he’d had much else to sustain him while the muscles healed.

“You knew awful boys,” Hotch says finally. The moment of before is gone with the addition of tortured memories and Spencer tosses the rope aside as Hotch checks the horses one final time before crawling into his bedroll, still feeling worked up and off-kilter, like his skin is on wrong and one notch too warm for the bitter weather surrounding. “Surely that one wasn’t your only friend.”

“Oh, he wasn’t my friend at all. And not really all of the boys were awful, one I knew wasn’t so bad… although I never told him so at the time, so likely he never knew.” Spencer’s expression is distant now, wiggling closer to the dying fire and hunkering low over it, blanket up like a shield. Hotch winces for him, knowing how unpleasant this kind of rain is once it starts creeping down collars and up sleeves, chilling every part of the body it touches. “He was a wonderful boy… the one who taught me to love the stars and the plants and everything around us. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t know half as much as I do now.”

Hotch thinks of the engraving with a thrill, the fantasy in his head adjusting so rapidly it leaves him with whiplash: he sees Spencer once more making love under the stars, but it’s not a pretty wife he’s adoring with every touch of his agile hands—it’s a boy as fae as he is, stealing kisses from each other in the dark because they know the day will be unkind to them. E doesn’t need to be for Elizabeth or Emily—E could also be Elliot, or Ethan.

“What happened to him?” Hotch asks breathlessly, because he’s far too old to be wishing he was ten years younger and that boy learning to be brave under a starry sky, far too old to wish he’d ever carved his name into a telescope as a reminder there’s more out there than fixing homes that will burn and making babies to bury. “Your boy, I mean. Where is he now?”

Spencer is quiet. He’s shuddering now, the cold seeping, and Hotch reaches his arm out from the warmth of his waterproof bedroll to take his frozen hand in his. Spencer doesn’t seem to notice the touch, his eyes still on the fire even though it’s guttered out. “He lost something special to him,” he murmurs, like he’s talking to himself. “Something that he needs to know who he is and where he’s going… I’m going to get it back.”

His luck, Hotch thinks, but that doesn’t make much sense. “I’m sure he’ll be grateful if you do,” he says instead of asking for an explanation, sensing correctly that he won’t get one anyway.

But Spencer looks at him oddly. “I don’t think he’ll care if I get it back,” he says, nothing even approaching expression in his voice anymore. “He’s dead. He doesn’t care for anything anymore. But it still _matters_ , even if no one is left to care.”

Hotch should tell him that it’s clear that _he_ cares, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t know why. Maybe he just recognises too much of himself in that statement. Haley and Jack had been five months dead, and Hotch had still dragged himself out of his sickbed to hunt down the monster who’d killed them, beating him to death with the remains of his sordid life. No, they hadn’t been alive to care that Foyet had died… but it still mattered. And here he is, still fleeing the law on a borrowed horse using Hotch instead of the name that’s known as a murderer, no matter how justified.

So he doesn’t say anything, just keeps holding the man’s hand as the temperature drops and time ticks on.

 

* * *

 

What happens next feels inevitable. The rain worsens. It surprises neither of them when Hotch slips from his bedroll and draws Spencer down beside him, inviting him in and pulling him close when the trembling fails to subside. They’re curled so close inside the confines of the bedding that Hotch can feel his heart beating, can count the thumps of his continued existence. And it’s impossible to know where to put his limbs without touching the other man, giving up completely on staying separate as he tries to warm him. Spencer obeys, sliding his hands down between Hotch’s legs and tucking his head in tight under his throat, curled in so small that he’s almost vanishing. Hotch is dizzy with the idea of how enclosed they are.

When warmth returns, so does feeling. Spencer tilts his head up, eyeing Hotch warily as he shifts his body closer, nudging his hip against him tentatively. Hotch breathes deeply, feeling those hands come back to life, stroking along his leg, up his leg, along his crotch. It’s a feeling like being alive when they push flat and heavy against his cock, a warm pressure. No one has touched him there since Haley, so he has no comparison but her when Spencer huffs hot air against his throat and then undoes the cord of Hotch’s pants. As much as they can move, he pulls Hotch free and strokes quickly as Hotch’s hands tighten around his back, fingers biting down, now thick and hard in the hand that’s wider and stronger than Haley’s had ever been.

They don’t talk. Hotch just breathes in measured gasps against Spencer’s hair as he’s teased to the point where he knows he’s going to come, his body twitching sporadically, his heart thumping vividly, his everything reminding him that he didn’t die with his family.

He muffles his moan as he comes by jerking his mouth low and biting into the shoulder of Spencer’s shirt, hips jerking forward messily as he finds the first release he’s found with another in the bedroll where he’s only ever had solitary pleasure before. And, as he does, Spencer speaks for the first time.

“I knew you’d sound exquisite,” he murmurs, smiling and nudging his nose against Hotch’s forehead. Hotch doesn’t know what to say or do as Spencer slips out slightly, the sound of the water of the canteen being poured over his hand before he’s back and tucked close enough that it’s apparent he’s still aroused. But instead of asking Hotch for anything in return, he simply says, “Goodnight,” and closes his eyes, content to fall asleep without release.

Hotch lies awake all night, staring up at the stars revealed when the rain ends and thinking of everything but what this means for their future.

 

* * *

 

As it turns out, it doesn’t mean anything. The job ends, and they go their separate ways, each of them in search of something other than what they’ve found. Hotch to find his purpose, and Spencer to find his boy’s luck. And since neither of them, no matter how carefully Hotch had learned his law and how beautiful Spencer found the passages of the books he’d memorised, know how to say the words that will express how much they want to stay together, there’s nothing to stop Hotch riding North on his borrowed horse, Spencer continuing West on the mule he’d won in a desperate game of cards.

But they leave a part of themselves with each other: Hotch gives Reid his Colt revolver, telling him firmly to make sure there’s always at least three bullets in the barrel if he’s relying on the thing to save his life, and Reid leaves the telescope in the bottom of Hotch’s bag for Hotch to find when he’s safely gone and well out of reach. It’s wrapped in paper with unfamiliar handwriting upon it, the paper almost cruelly revealing E’s engraved message to Spencer as Hotch unwinds it to read the new note: _To Aaron: it’s easier to find yourself when you can see further than humanly possible ~S._

And, try as he might, Hotch can never quite forget the man he worked with for five months and loved for just under—because that note covering a message from a long-dead loved one doesn’t seem like the kind of thing someone expecting to come back from finding his luck would leave.

It’s much more like an apology for being unable to say goodbye.


	3. A Man with No Life to Speak Of

He’s riding for his life with a gun hot in his hand, and the only thing he’s sorry for is that there’d only been two bullets in the barrel when he’d needed it: if there’d been three, they’d have never been caught to begin with. It’s almost disrespectful to Aaron’s memory, he thinks, that he’d failed to heed the final advice the man would ever give him.

“Go, go,” he breathes, skin hot and the world hotter as he flies across the land on the horse below him, riding so desperately that the bunch and fold of muscles of his gelding feels like an extension of his own desire not to have the men chasing him catch up. Knees how Aaron taught him, elbows in, he folds low on the sweat-streaked back of the horse blowing hard at the gallop below and goads him on further to fantastic speeds. “Go! You’re doing it—ride, Rabbit, ride!”

His horse twitches below him, his hand stroking down the mane before coming to rest on the warm neck, reins loose for a second as he gives him his head and urges him to fly.

“Ride, Rabbit,” Spencer cries again, closing his eyes and remembering a boy shouting much the same thing as he’d once tried to race a gangly foal along an endless paddock fence.

And Rabbit rides. They ground whips below them, their pursuers left behind as the world opens out before them. They can’t be stopped, they’re intangible, a part of the earth and sky: just like the myths, the horses of legends, and Spencer whoops with one hand on his horse’s mane holding himself steady and the other with the revolver Aaron had told him could save his life. And it had. It had—the gun and the horse, both as magic as each other, and they’re _free—_

The bullet slams into him from behind with all the inevitability of his own demise.

 _Fuck_ , he thinks, lurching with it, Rabbit snorting nervously as suddenly Spencer’s giving him all the wrong kinds of signals. Then he thinks, _no_ , because him dying is one thing: he wouldn’t have given Aaron the telescope if he’d thought he’d be getting out of this alive. But there are hooves behind him, the man who shot him, and he hears dogs. Him dying is one thing, but his luck can’t die with him.

Rabbit can’t die with him.

He urges his horse on until he can’t urge him any longer, hoping the relentless gallop doesn’t falter when he does; as Spencer feels his blood drain from him and tip him down towards the rush of the ground flying by below him, he manages one last request, one he owes the boy he let die and the horse he needs to save. One he’s voiced before in a moment just as desperate as this, closing his eyes and seeing the boy on the fence once more, this time bound and bleeding as a dog rips at him and another boy laughs while leaving him there to die.

He closes his eyes and feels himself fall, tumbling towards the dying dog and the horse standing over it with bloodied hooves, murmuring _Rabbit, go home,_ to the memory and the animal and anyone else listening.

_Rabbit, get us home._

His final regret is never kissing Aaron while he had the chance.

This could have ended differently.


	4. A Horse with His Heavy Burden

He thinks about Spencer Reid a lot more than what he suspects is healthy. The regrets he carries about him are heavier than most, mostly because his regrets about his dead family have lingered too long to be this raw. He wishes he’d kissed him, just once.

He wishes he’d asked to ride alongside him.

As it is, months pass and the memory of the man’s face fades, as does the phantom touch of his hand on Hotch’s body. But it doesn’t fade completely; at nights when he’s alone, Hotch digs deep into his memories with his eyes closed until he’s lost in the scent of the man’s sweat, the rasp of calloused fingers over his body, the soft sound he’d made as Hotch had found pleasure in their bed. When he’s done, heartrate slowing and just slightly guilty about what use he’s putting the remarkable man’s memory to, Hotch watches the stars through the eye Spencer left him, and he wonders.

Winter kicks in. He lodges with a ranch looking for good workers to help with the winter-bound stock. There’s no snow in this desert land, but the cold is vicious and doesn’t help to chase away his longing for a warmth in his bed.

Sometimes, he considers taking one of the eager women around the area, wooing her and charming her and, finally, working to fall in love with her. Starting a family. A life. But he doesn’t want that again. He wants nothing to do with delicate curves and the soft touches of any of the women he meets, finding them wanting in select ways. None of them are tall enough to match him in height, few of them are as eager to hear all that he knows of plants or skies, and he dislikes their lack of hazel eyes and a casual limp. He wants the body against his to be lean and hard, to have known the road like he knows it, with hands that can be rough but don’t have to be. The dreams he tumbles into when he fumbles for his bed, more often than not drunk and disorderly as he tries to chase away these wantings, are filled with these thoughts as well as the imagined burn of stubble on his jaw, a hard promise of pleasure rocking against him, and a man willing to help him chase away his nightmares by telling him to look beyond them.

But there’s no point in dreaming because that man is gone. And it doesn’t matter how far Hotch looks using the telescope or otherwise because, as winter becomes spring which gives way to a hot summer, he’s never going to find him. Not that he’s looking.

Honest.

 

* * *

 

Post winter, he wanders. There’s plenty of work in these gold and silver struck towns around him, but Hotch finds that with enough money from the stagecoach job in his pocket, for the first time he isn’t inclined to take any of them. Instead, he travels listlessly from town to town on his borrowed horse, lingering in every saloon and asking at every post office if they know of a Spencer Reid.

None of them have.

Summer finds him choking on the desert heat. He’s lost and weary, tiring of the road and wondering if three years is long enough to risk DC once more, despite knowing it’s really not. Whispers of thought occur to him again, of making a home out here and settling down, alone… more whispers of thought occur, remembering Spencer talking of _his_ home, of the hanging valley and the aspens and the snow, and he begins to wonder.

He finds a town big enough to have a library and kicks the dust from his boots at the door, walking into the hush of the book-filled room with the strangest feeling like he’s going back in time. If it wasn’t for the derringer in his pocket, his rifle checked in with the local sheriff, he’d have sworn he was twenty again and studying to pass the bar.

“Can I help you?” asks a stern woman, eyeing his duster coat and worn boots and sun-baked skin. He’s got his hat in his hand and is regretting not getting a haircut before coming here, although he’s at least clean-shaven and has been since the day Spencer shaved him and expressed his preference. It’s like he’s clinging to the Aaron Spencer liked, even if that’s a lost hope…

“Uh,” Hotch says, looking around. “Actually, yes. I think so. Do you have any maps of the state?”

“Of Nevada? A few, although since we’re fairly new as a state, they’re few and far between. What exactly are you looking for?” She eyes him slightly less warily now, foot tapping.

He thinks. “Snow,” he says finally. “I need to know where it snows to help find a… friend.”

“Oh well, sir, most of the state is mountains—the Sierra Nevadas run across almost the entire state and some of them are downright alpine. A map I can get you, and snow too, but I’m not sure you’ll be able to find a single man from what they tell you. I assume you don’t know his town?”

No, he doesn’t. Nor any towns close. Hotch thinks for a while as the librarian finds him several maps and shows him with a ruler where the snow falls, a prohibitively expansive range for how hot it is down the southern end of the state.

“Could you tell me what a hanging valley is?” he asks finally, regretting not asking Spencer at the time. “Are they rare? And do you have any books on aspens?”

She looks at him strangely but vanishes and returns with a small pile of books of plants and geological formations. “Good luck,” she informs him. “They’re all we have. We’re not like those fancy libraries they have up East.”

“Thank you,” Hotch says, already beginning to read.

 

* * *

 

It takes him three days, but he finds that aspens can grow no lower than 1,500 feet in the Western states, the vicious summers pushing them further up into the mountainous ranges. A small booklet on plants of Nevada some ten years earlier suggests that they’re only found in the most northernmost part of the state, as it decries the lack of the researcher’s favourite tree in this ‘hellish county’. And he finds very little on hanging valleys except that they’re glacial in nature and are often found in U-shaped canyons. With this in mind, he thanks the woman, takes the careful notes he’s taken, and rides North with a purpose in mind. Even without conscious decision, he’s made up his mind to find him, no matter how long it takes. After all, there’s no one in this world he owes his time to—maybe his purpose is by the side of the man on the mule, helping him find another man’s luck.

With the mountain ranges on the horizon ahead of him, him and his horse make their way there. It’s a lonely road that feels a little less lonely for the knowledge that there’s someone waiting at the end of it, if only they can find him. The dreams he’s having change, just a little, from lust and skin and sinful wantings to a cabin in an overhanging valley, high above another with one end open to the world. Those dreams are beautiful and exhaustive, as each is painfully mundane. In one, he drives a head of cattle to his property up there, coming home. In another, he paints a wall. Always, there’s the knowledge of the presence of another, just through that door—perhaps in a room filled with books and stars and happy endings.

Hopeful dreams are the hardest to wake from, and Hotch wishes he could remain asleep.

The lonely road he’s riding ends at the newly settled town of Eureka, the silver boom having been kind to those here. The mountains behind the township sit watchful, Hotch’s eyes always upon them as he rides up the main street wondering if anyone here would know much of a hanging valley and a man on a mule. But when he hitches the mare and heads into the tavern there, a nice place with a pretty girl serving, he doubts that any of these men here drinking away the dirt of the mines have much on their minds beyond what’s below them.

“We don’t want any trouble with that,” suggests the barman when Hotch takes a seat before him, nodding at the rifle on Hotch’s back. “Now, we don’t ask you to give up arms, but if you plan on staying here I recommend poking in on the sheriff and giving him your name. So many new faces in and out these days, you’ll get a lot less trouble if they know your intentions are kind.”

“I’m just looking for a friend, friend,” Hotch says with a smile he knows is charming but still feels odd on his tired face. “Man named Spencer Reid. Know anyone of that name?”

“None that have presented as such. What makes you think he’s here?”

“He said he lived in a mountain range,” Hotch says, knowing it’s a long shot and taking it anyway. Maybe some of the luck of this place will rub off on him.

“Hmm. Well, if he lives in the Ruby Mountains, he won’t come here much for supplies. Elko is closer, and bigger.”

Hotch thanks him, finishing his scotch and asking if there’s any room for him and board for his horse. He’s tired and sore and could use a bath and bed before travelling onwards, promising the man he’ll check in with the law while the barman’s wife prepares a room they let to some strangers. It’s something to kill time and he takes the mare and walks her down there, letting her nudge at his shoulder as they clop down the unsealed road, thoughts miles away to the snow-capped peaks he’s imagining. There’s no fear of his name having spread this far; he’s not notorious for killing Foyet, for all that it was unlawful and brutal. Likely he wouldn’t have faced the law for it anyway if he’d stayed, but shame had driven him out into the night and far from everyone who knew what he’s a man capable of.

But when he steps into the sheriff’s building, the man looks up and barks a laugh to see him. “Just who we need!” he exclaims, making his way around the desk to offer his hand. “You a bounty hunter?”

“Ex-lawman from over East, looking to start a new life over here,” Hotch says warily. “I have a friend around these parts who might be able to assist me with that, over at Elko. Is there a problem?”

“Damn horse thieves in this area,” the sheriff responds with a rattling cough, releasing Hotch’s hand from a bone-crushing shake and meandering back to his desk to tap at a telegram paper seated there. “Convenient that you’re here, this came from Elko itself. I can’t spare myself to ride out looking for him, but if you’re looking for some gold heading up that way, want to keep an eye out?”

Hotch walks over, catching a glimpse of the Wanted poster the man is drawing up. The bounty is what catches his eye, huffing out a surprised noise at the easy six-hundred dollars being offered for the man alive so long as the horse is found with him. “Must be a damn valuable horse,” he notes, still not committed despite the hefty price, eyes lingering on the name of the man: _William Lynch._

“Aye, that’s the thing. I know the owners making the complaint—they got money plenty, up in Elko County with a silver line on their land and plenty of livestock to boot. The old man just kicked it leaving his boys with the property, but they’re not known for their horses and those boys would have made a nice mint from their father’s death. Must have sentimental value.” The sheriff is still watching him carefully, reaching into his pocket for a pipe and tapping it on the desk, leaving tobacco on the paper. “If you want the job, it’s yours. I don’t even have a deputy out here and wouldn’t spare him for a horse if I did, no matter how rich the bounty.”

“All you have is a name?” Hotch presses. “William Lynch?”

“Ayup. You heading over to Elko, you can stop in on the Reids’ land and learn more—they’ll be pleased as punch to tell you. I figure there’ll be bounty hunters aplenty doing so, with that kind of price.”

Hotch freezes, that name thudding home. “Did you say Reid?” he asks carefully, making sure to show no emotion in his voice as he does so. “What was the complainant’s name again?”

“Oldest boy is Tobias Reid. Father that just died was William. Something on your mind?”

“He has brothers?” Hotch presses, heart thudding so hard that he’s worried it’s visible. “Is one of them a Spencer? Spencer Reid?”

“Hmm, not that I know of. Maybe the youngest, I don’t know them well enough to say. Only ever knew Will and Tobias, since Will has shares in one of the companies mining Eureka. Problem?”

“No,” Hotch says with another forced smile. “No problem, thank you. I’ll ride over first thing.”

“Oh, if it helps, doubt it will,” calls the sheriff after him as he thanks the man and turns to leave, one of those posters in his pocket, “The horse? It’s got a name, apparently. Telegram noted it specifically—goes by Rabbit.”

Despite the warm air, Hotch goes cold.

But he’s sure it can’t be.

 

* * *

 

The Reids’ homestead is beautiful. With the mountains so close, it’s a picturesque view of Western America, cattle lowing to each other in the wide-sweeping paddocks and a herd of horses taking no notice of Hotch and his mare as they ride past. When he gets to the huge home sprawled at the end of a long drive, he finds that this is the kind of place to have separate buildings to house the army of staff they employ to maintain the building. Stables block the view of the servant quarters, but he’d seen them on his way in, dismounting from the mare as a man comes out to take her reins.

“Purpose?” the man asks him, uniform denoting him as some sort of steward. Hotch watches him for a moment, judging his airs before answering.

“Here about the missing horse,” he says finally. To his surprise, the man’s face goes from professional to cold in an instant, stiffly turning and leading him into the main building without a word. They even use the front entrance, a surprise to Hotch who’d expected that, with travel-worn clothes, he’d certainly be asked to use a staff door. Quite the opposite, he’s deposited in a parlour with fine furniture aplenty, looking around at the oiled portraits of the family and wondering. One catches his eye—it’s a man who doesn’t look familiar, not really, but the children by his side… after staring at the oldest for a moment, Hotch realises there’s a resemblance there. Hazel eyes and those haphazard brown curls… not a perfect likeness, but if this boy was to stand by Spencer, no one would doubt their family ties.

But none of the children in the portraits, with their fixed painted smiles, is Spencer himself.

He’s brought out tea and thanks the dark-haired maid, who shoots him such a hateful stare with her cold, equally dark eyes that he’s stunned into silence. The tea already in his cup, when he tries it, is weak and cold, not the first time these leaves have been used. A strange contrast to being invited through the front door, when it doesn’t seem like the place is miserly.

Hotch wonders.

When the maid returns with a plate of sandwiches, he speaks. “Is there some disservice I’ve done you?” he asks, shooting his prettiest smile when she glances at him icily, bitten nails stark on the beautiful plate she’s holding. “I’m sorry if I have. I’m just a man looking for work and taking all I can, I have no qualm with this lovely place or the people within it.”

She looks around, eyes lingering on the closed door and silent halls before speaking. “If you have no qualms with this place, nor desire to cause us harm, then I recommend you turn around and get the hell out,” she says, stunning him once more. She doesn’t talk like a maid. There’s no deference in her tone, her accent is rounded and strange, well-bred. And the anger in her voice is unmistakable.

“Is this about the thief?” Hotch queries, because that’s all he can think of. “William? Do you know him, or his whereabouts?”

“No and no, and even if I did…” The girl—woman, Hotch realises, she’s older than she’s trying to seem—looks back at the door warily before spitting out, “I wouldn’t tell the likes of you, _murderer.”_

And then she’s gone, the door swinging shut behind her as footsteps approach the other door, leaving Hotch pondering that. He’s sure he’s never met her, and he’d never forget a face as vivid as that one—which means her response is definitely connected to this job he’s taken.

Interesting.

“Oh, I see Emily has brought out refreshments, what a good girl,” says the man who walks in—Hotch places him at early-twenties in age—dressed fine and without a speak of dust on him. Hotch nods his head, stepping around to face the man properly as, before he even greets Hotch, he pours himself a tea and takes a sandwich for himself. He doesn’t complain about the tea, so Hotch assumes that it’s only him who’s been given the doctored cup. Also interesting. “Now, you’re taking up the bounty we placed on that no-good thief?”

“I am, sir,” Hotch answers politely. “Mr…?”

“Tobias Reid. Look here, Mr…?”

“Hotchner,” Hotch answers. “Aaron Hotchner.”

“Mr. Hotchner, you need to know this bastard has been a thorn in my side for years, but he’s gone too far this time. The horse he’s taken? It’s a valuable animal, not just in potential and breeding but also in sentimental value. You’re aware that my father just passed?” The pause he takes is loaded, his smile firmly fixed in place but cold and without feeling. It doesn’t really look like he knows how to smile, and Hotch doesn’t trust him an inch as he nods assent. “Well, this horse meant a lot to him and he meant for me to have it on his passing. Lynch, that mutt, objected to this. Thinks he has some claim to the animal because he was working here when it was born, some verbal agreement that I promise never happened between him and my father that he would have the horse.”

“He used to work here? Do you have any pictures of him? That would be handy.” Hotch isn’t surprised by the man’s quick nod, but he is relieved. He doesn’t fancy searching for a man with no face, just a name—and names can be changed, as easily as becoming Hotch instead of Hotchner in some cases. “I assume he left in disgrace and that’s why he took the horse?”

“Exactly. He was a liar and a thief and a womaniser when he was here and my father rightfully threw him out on his ass—although that didn’t stop him coming back here constantly, harassing the staff. Emily!”

The maid appears again, so quickly that Hotch raises an eyebrow. “Sir,” she asks with a curtsey that’s _just_ deep enough not to be rude, shooting Hotch a stare that dares him to accuse her of eavesdropping. “How may I be of assistance?”

“Tell the man about how you were harassed.” Tobias pauses, clearly waiting for an answer, but Emily is silent and tensed. “Now, Emily. God knows, you have a tongue. Use it!” He moves from his place, taking two steps until he’s beside her and grabbing her arm, shaking it a little. “Come on now, the man has a right to know what kind of an animal he’s hunting.”

Hotch is as tense as Emily looks, seeing a flicker of pain cross her features, her mouth thinning sharply. And Tobias is holding her arm tight enough to bruise for sure.

“There’s no need to shake her,” Hotch says with forced calm, not wanting to seem as though he cares in case it inspires greater acts of cruelty. He’s met men like that before, those who use the spectacle of violence against a lesser in order to force respect from those around them. “She’s just gathering her thoughts, aren’t you, miss?”

“Sir,” she hisses, anger clear in her voice. “It’s as he says… Mr. Lynch visited to harass us.”

But she offers no more details and her expression is stormy.

“And the horse is rightfully mine,” Tobias presses.

“Don’t know much about horses or who they belong to,” she replies shortly. “But I guess you wouldn’t say so if it wasn’t true, since if it wasn’t true he’d have done no wrong and you’d have no reason to be sending men against him.”

Silence. Tobias looks at her with such savage hatred in his expression that Hotch’s hackle are up instantly. If a man had looked like his horse like that, Hotch would have bought the horse immediately to stop him whipping it simply to draw blood. “Get out,” Tobias says in a low, dangerous voice. “To your room, you’re dismissed for the day, no pay. I don’t like your tone.”

She nods, curtseying again before turning to leave.

“Emily?” Tobias calls after her, looking at Hotch and smiling like a snake. Emily pauses by the door, fingers resting on the handle and without looking back. “I’ll be speaking to you later about how to talk to your betters. Don’t leave your room. And tell Hewson to get me the sketches I had done of Lynch.”

Despite only being able to see her in profile, Hotch still sees that she whitens at the implied threat, leaving without another word. Something cold and dark settles in Hotch’s gut.

“Sandwich?” In the quiet of her leaving, Tobias’s voice is startling. Hotch declines, the tea already settling grossly in his gut. Every one of his instincts is screaming at him to get out, to ride away from this place, and he’s thinking of listening when the steward arrives and lays a packet of papers on the coffee table before them. Hotch sees a horse deed indeed made out to a William Reid and a formal Will signed and notarised that he, after Tobias nods at him, picks up to find that it absolutely grants ownership of the horse known as ‘Rabbit’ to the eldest son, Tobias Reid, upon his death.

The final papers on the table are the sketches. Hotch looks at them next. And he keeps looking. And looking.

And, finally, he swallows down everything he can’t, won’t, say and agrees to find the man pictured upon them for the bounty listed. He doesn’t ask to take a sketch, both because he doesn’t want a reminder of this and also because he doesn’t need it: he knows the man pictured, but under a different name and a different life.

When Spencer had said he was looking for his luck, he’d never mentioned that he planned to steal it.

But before he leaves, he asks one thing: “Will he be hanged for his crimes?” is the question on his lips, well aware that there’s no sympathy for horse thieving out here.

Tobias looks at him, that same smile on his face. “No,” he says. “Mutt or not, he took the horse under the mistaken belief that it’s his. I won’t hang him for that—I just want the animal back and him serving whatever punishment the courts decide. I’m not like the men out here, Mr. Hotchner. I have no desire for blood.”

It’s a small comfort, but only a small one. Hotch is a firm believer of justice where it’s deserved, but he knows he’s not the kind of man who could see the man he feels so intimately towards hanged.

He intends to do his job; this allows him to do so.

 

* * *

 

He rides for the mountains with some mind to see if there are any at the base of it who know of the glacial canyons within. Tobias had assured him that Spencer—William, Hotch corrects himself, he gave Hotch a false name all those months ago—owns a small property within the range, although he hadn’t known the exact location. It’s likely that he’s holed up there, hidden within the recesses of the mountains he loves.

It feels like a betrayal that Hotch is now using the knowledge he gained in trust to now hunt the man who gave it, but Hotch is feeling betrayed too. All his dreams of finding a home here, of settling down, they’re shattered now; at least, those that involve Spencer beside him. Spencer isn’t a man who exists, he’s never existed. The telescope in Hotch’s pocket is likely stolen too, just like the horse and the maps and everything else, because Tobias had also assured him that the man ‘William Lynch’ has never set foot in a college, especially not Yale. Despite knowing that he’d been perilously close to falling in love with a lie, Hotch still falls asleep that night beside the road with the telescope in his hand, using it to study the mountains ahead.

His mare’s welcoming nicker wakes him, a warning for him that he’s not alone. Without moving to give away that he’s awake, he slits his eyes open and watches the gloom where his horse is looking, her ears perked and eyes bright as she nickers again, straining against her rope.

There’s an answering whinny from the darkness, one that ends on a bray. Hotch knows that sound: it’s a mule.

He bolts upright, something cold pressing against the back of his skull. It clicks.

“Hands where I can see them,” says a woman’s voice, ice cold and definitely ready to pull the trigger. “Get on your stomach, snake, or I’ll put more holes in you for you to piss through.”

“You’re the maid,” Hotch says, recognising her voice as he does what she says and lies flat, hands behind his head. The gun doesn’t shift, steady against his skull as her other hand pats him down. “Why are you following me? And armed?”

“Shut up,” she snaps, shoving his face into the dirt and suddenly leaning close, her knee digging painfully into his spine. “How the fuck did you get this?!”

“I don’t know what this is,” Hotch says into the dirt, wincing as it gets in his mouth. “I can’t—”

She lets him up, shoving the telescope into his face. “This, how did you get this?!” she barks again, no longer dressed as a maid, instead as a man with her hood covering that long, dark hair. And, behind her, a mule that even in the moonlight Hotch knows is Jack emerges from the trees to nuzzle at the mare happily. “Where’s the man you took this from?”

“He gave it to me.” Hotch looks to his bag, nodding at it. “Front of that. You’ll find a small pocket with trinkets within. There’s a note—read it.”

She eyes him warily but does as he says, the gun still on him as she dumps his bag out. His wedding ring hits the ground, no longer on his finger as he’d felt too wrong to wear it while dreaming of another. The note drifts down beside it, along with a tattered photograph of him and Haley and Jack as an infant. She barely bothers with the photograph, picking up the note and staring at it.

“This is Spencer’s handwriting,” she says finally, now looking at him with frustration clear despite the shadow of her hood. “He gave it to you?”

Hotch nods, careful since he’s still in danger of her bullet.

“What a dick,” she mutters, dropping the note and standing, scooping up the telescope as she goes. He’s torn to see it vanish into her pocket, both glad to be rid of it while also feeling like he’s losing a part of himself. “This thing cost a mint.”

That lingers for a moment, before he clicks. E— _Emily_. “You gave it to him,” Hotch guesses. The gun doesn’t waver. She’s barely paying attention to him.

“I should shoot you anyway,” she says, more to herself than him. “You’re a bounty hunter.”

“I’m not. I’m just a man, and I know him. We’re… friends. Why else would he have given me the telescope when he clearly treasures it?”

She stares at him for a long moment after that, her expression fraught. “He _gave_ it to you?” she repeats again, finally lowering the gun and letting him up. “Don’t lie to me, this is important—he trusted you enough to give that to you?”

“Yes. We worked together for five months, on a stagecoach. We were close by the end of it.” Hotch looks at her pocket, where he can see the shape of the telescope. “You didn’t answer me—are you the lover who gave it to him?”

Her stare changes from focused to amused. “Hardly,” she answers. “I’m not his type. But I _did_ give it to him, as a gift when he was awarded his doctorate. I bet you didn’t know that, did you? Tobias likes to spout the bullshit that Spence is some uneducated yokel sniffing from scraps at his heels, but he has a PhD, one of the first Yale has ever awarded. You’ve been lied to, and so has everyone else around here. Here’s a question for you—will you help me save his life?”

It’s Hotch’s turn to stare, his brain whirling. “Why?” he rasps.

Emily steps forward, kneeling so she’s eye to eye with him and he can see how intent she is. “I know Spencer didn’t steal Rabbit,” she says with her voice so intent he can tell she’s desperate to convince him. “I _know_ , because the whole time he was at Yale, Rabbit was there with him—and so was I.”

“There are no women at Yale.”

“Yes, there are. I was one. You’re out of your time, bounty hunter, things change. Do you know what doesn’t change? That no good pig fucker Tobias Reid. When Spencer vanished from New Haven three months after graduating, I knew something was wrong. I couldn’t find him there and figured I might as well ride out to where he said he grew up, just outside of Elko. When I got out here asking for a Reid, they pointed me to that house—where I saw Rabbit in the stable, no Spencer. And when I showed the staff this…” This is a photograph, small enough to be put in a locket: Spencer and Emily sitting together, the shadows of the real smiles they’d have given before they’d faded while waiting for the camera’s eye still visible on their faces. Hotch can see scratches around the edges where a locket would have held it before it was removed. “…they told me they knew him as William Lynch and that he grew up there. These are the only land owning Reids in Nevada state, and they have no birth records for a Spencer Reid. But there _is_ a birth registered in the area for a William Lynch to a Diana Lynch _,_ no father, and here’s the kicker: the copy of the birth-certificate they have here has been edited. It’s not the original.”

“What exactly did you study?” Hotch asks her, a little startled by this fierce, determined woman. “And why are you telling me all of this?”

“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that Spencer’s being set up and they’re using you as a weapon against him. I need to know if you’re going to do right by the man who gave you that telescope, or if you’re going to act as a mistaken arm of the law to help get my best friend killed—my _only_ friend killed.” She stares him down, anger showing again. “I don’t know what the hell went on in his life and I have no idea how Rabbit got from my stables to this place, but I do know that I’ve been Spencer’s friend since we were eighteen years old and the only times he’s spoken of his brother it’s been with fear—can’t say I blame him, now I’ve met the monster. There’ll be no mercy shown if you find him and drag him back there.”

‘His brother’ she’d said. Hotch feels his hands bite into the ground below, his mind racing. “Do you know where his home is?”

She shakes her head, still watching him. “If I did, I’d have ridden after him the night he took Rabbit. He came to the house a week before the theft—Tobias threw him out, tried to get the ranchers to rough him up on the way, but they refused. Knew him growing up and like him well enough, all the staff there do. None of them believe he stole Rabbit, _none_ of them. They’re all sure the horse was freely given. And it doesn’t make sense _.”_

None of it makes sense to Hotch, but in particular: “Did he see you there? If you’re such good friends, why wouldn’t he have warned you of what he planned, taking the horse?”

“He saw me, and I don’t know why he didn’t warn me—maybe because he knew I’d insist on helping him.” She grins wickedly, and he raises an eyebrow at her. But the grin vanishes. “All he told me was to leave, immediately, and to never come back. He risked sneaking back onto the homestead to warn me again, was certain I was in danger there if they found out we were friends. When I said I wasn’t leaving without him, he told me to take his mule and meet him in Elko a week later, near where they’re going to put the railway. That night I woke to find the place alive with law and a posse riding after him, saying he was a thief. The deadline was three days ago. I’ve gone there every day since and he hasn’t shown.”

Hotch considers all of this, every inch of it. Does he still believe Spencer is a thief?

He’s not sure. If he is, he needs to face the law. But Emily doesn’t seem to think mercy will be shown, despite Tobias’s words, and Hotch is more inclined to trust her smile than Tobias’s—even if it’s wicked.

“Will you ride with me to find him?” he asks finally, seeing her suspicion spark before he continues: “I don’t know where he is—but I think I can find him. And I won’t make a move without his word on what happened, and without reviewing the evidence on all sides. Right now, all I have is a horse deed in Tobias’s name and your word that Spencer is who he says he is.”

“You want evidence?” Emily pauses, taking a deep breath before continuing: “I can get you evidence, but not if I ride with you. I know how to investigate. I bet you if I start digging into Tobias Reid, I’ll find something that exonerates Spencer—will you wait to act until I return with it?”

He thinks about that, considers it. Realises that it’s their best chance of all of them getting out of this without losing something important.

And says, “Yes.”

She promises that she’ll return, asking him to come down to the base of the mountain, to this spot, once a week on Mondays: when she has the evidence, she’ll meet him here. All she asks in return is that he doesn’t make a move until then, except to find Spencer and make sure that he’s okay.

He promises. But, before he leaves, he asks her for one thing.

“Can I have the telescope back?” he asks her. “I… it’s important to me. In return, I’ll give you my mare. She’s swifter than Jack, and far less stubborn—she’ll get you further.”

Emily looks at the mare, walking over there to pet the diamond blaze in the middle of her black forehead. “Does your mare have a name?” she asks. Hotch shakes his head. “Well then, I can’t take a girl out without her having a name… how about it, girl? Let’s call you… Blackbird.”

And Hotch says nothing, just nods and watches his borrowed horse ride off into the night with a woman upon her who he doesn’t know if he can trust. It’s like letting go of the last part of the man from DC, the one who’d asked to borrow a horse from his best friend and been gifted one immediately. With that heavy on his mind and the telescope heavy in his pocket, he turns and walks away, Jack loping beside him.

He doubts he’ll see either of them again.

 

* * *

 

He finds a man herding sheep and asks him about glacial canyons and, to his shock, he gets an answer. “You could try Lamoille Canyon,” the man says, looking at the rough sketch of the kind of thing Hotch is looking for. “It’s got those open-sided valley things, three or four of them. Don’t know if anyone lives up there, but there’s an aspen path that will take you right through. Cold up there though, had some early snow last week that stuck, just thawing now. If you weren’t riding a mule, I’d tell you to wait till it’s less icy.”

“Thank you,” Hotch assures him, “but I trust my mule, and it can’t wait.” Jack takes that moment to try and twist his head around to bite, no more fond of Hotch now than he’d been when they’d parted ways.

“Right,” says the man, moving on.

Alone—well, with Jack—Hotch moves into the shadow of the mountain, travelling up and up and up looking for an aspen path and following the ghost of a man he’s scared to lose.

 

* * *

 

It’s Jack who finds it, perking his long ears and letting out a loud heee- _haw_ that echoes as he suddenly surges forward. Hotch lets him have his head, heart drumming as they exit the aspen path, the fall trees looming overhead in coats of orange and gold, and gallop towards a narrow ledge leading up to a valley above. It’s a terrifying ascent but Jack doesn’t even falter, just whuffs at the ground and then trudges up it with Hotch clinging on for dear life.

Partway up, the side catches Hotch’s leg painfully, causing him to curse and twist in the saddle to try get his leg away. If he’d believed he could lead Jack up the slope without the mule taking off, he’d have done that—but his train of thought is derailed as he sees dark smears on the rock.

“Whoa there,” he murmurs, dismounting from the back of the mule and ignoring him as he snorts and keeps going. Instead, Hotch crouches and brushes his hand across what’s undoubtably dried blood, his heart now beating in his throat. Up the slope he follows the mule, until the rocky ground because flat dirt again, both him and the animal walking along a desire path pressed into the wild turf. More aspens loom as they move silently through the trees, Jack no longer eagerly surging ahead. Now, his eyes are wide and his nostrils flaring, ears swivelling back and forth. _Danger danger_ those ears are saying, and Hotch draws his rifle and steadies his feet.

“Come here,” he whispers, catching Jack’s reins and hitching him to an aspen so his hooves don’t give them away. “Stay.” Onwards alone he goes, creeping through the trees that are tall enough that snow from the week before is still laid thickly around, his boots crunching through the crust as he goes. There’s no wind in this valley, the world still and silent, the air so cold that it burns as he breathes it.

Then he comes out on a different trail. They must have entered the aspens at a different point from whoever came before, because when Hotch looks down at the tracks frozen neatly into the snow, he can read it easily. A burdened horse had ploughed through it with an uneven gait, leaving furrows and piles in his path as he meandered back and forth, in no real hurry. Stopping to feed, Hotch guesses, his hands bunched tight around the rifle. No rider guided this animal.

He follows that trail, but even if he hadn’t been watching it so closely, it would have been apparent when it changed. Here, the snow is stained and smoothed. The horse had walked through, but something had dragged behind it… something that Hotch guesses is responsible for the trail of blood left to dry in place atop the snow, held in memoriam by the frigid alpine air. And he’s not that good at tracking to guess with certainty but, if asked, he’d say the tracks look damn well like the horse’s rider had fallen from the saddle with his foot looped through the stirrup.

Brain silent now, almost buzzing along with the stillness of the valley, Hotch keeps walking. Around the rifle, his hands shake. The cold is almost welcome because at least he can’t feel the terror that’s struggling to surmount itself, take over everything from his blood to his brain. He’s sure he’s looking for a body. It’s too much blood to be otherwise, and too much time has passed since it was shed.

The trees suddenly end, watery sunlight here dispelling the snow into grey tufts and slicks of ice. At the end of the browned grass Hotch is looking over, there’s a quiet cabin. The gardens around it are dead, partially overgrown where they’re not bare and frost-torn. No smoke eddies from the chimney and the small stable to the side is closed and noiseless. Nothing moves.

Something moves.

Hotch stalks that something closer to the cabin, following the side edge to the front and walking out to find a deep chocolate brown horse with a flaxen mane and tail lifting its head to study him curiously. For a second, Hotch almost laughs to see the animal standing there, but the laugh falters. If this is Rabbit, the horse that Spencer risked everything for, something has gone wrong. The animal is still saddled and bridled, its coat marked horribly by dirt and sweat and its mouth a mess from where it’s been grazing around the bit. When it snorts and trots away from Hotch approaching, it limps badly, the saddle dragged around its belly and hitting its leg painfully with every step.

Hotch has a vivid, chilling memory of how carefully Spencer had cared for Jack, even giving him the blanket that would have helped on the cold nights travelling.

It rips a sound from his mouth, the gun dropping from ready to lowered: “Spencer!”

No answer, just the horse snorting and trying to roll to dislodge the saddle, getting up and half-rearing in anger when Hotch takes an automatic step towards it. It does it again, teeth bared, and Hotch backs up and looks to the cabin, where the front door is open.

It’s open.

His heart and hope the loudest things in this frozen valley, Hotch turns and walks towards that open door, fully expecting to find nothing more inside than the corpse of the man he could have loved.


	5. The Men and Their Broken Cabin

Inside the cabin is a silent form, crumpled on the rug before an empty fireplace. Hotch stands in the doorway and stares down at that shape, his eyes seeing the white-blue skin and hands turned to claws from the cold and the rot but his brain throwing up images of finding Haley and Jack dead.

It’s in that second that he realises he’s been lying to himself this entire time, pretending that he has anything worth living for. If there weren’t two animals outside needing care and Emily potentially returning and waiting in vain for him, Hotch might have taken his derringer and aimed it at its first human, deciding that this is as far as he planned to go in a world that clearly doesn’t want either of them.

But Spencer is dead and men need burying, no matter who they are. Hotch closes his eyes and accepts that.

Something shoves him forward, his knee slamming into a side table as he whirls to find Rabbit pushing his way into the house, whickering angrily and baring its teeth again. “Thanks,” Hotch tells the horse furiously as it brings inside snow and dirt, clopping heavily over to where Spencer’s body lies in a pool of dried blood. A photograph in a frame falls from a cupboard it knocks, shattering on the ground, and books go flying, dust everywhere. Hotch winces with every crash, too numb to stop the horse from destroying this comfortable, forgotten home and too heartbroken to feel anything other than sad when Rabbit lowers its head and mouths at Spencer’s hair and face, leaving streaky horse spit on his forehead and cheek.

Spencer makes a noise, the softest groan. So soft that Hotch, for a heartbeat, thinks the horse did it—but then he moves. One of those clawed hands shifts, lifting so slightly as though to push the horse away before falling back to the floor. Just a shift, but enough.

Hotch leaps the chair he’s behind, gun clattering to the ground as his hands shove the horse back and fumble to turn Spencer onto his back. “Spencer,” he breathes, heart pausing on the cusp as he studies the dead-looking face his hands are now cupped around, at the scratches and bruises from where he’d been dragged by the horse. “Spence, hey. Come on, tell me you’re alive. Are you alive?”

Those half-closed eyes flicker, then open. Hazel and dull, they stare at him without recognition.

“You’re _alive_ ,” Hotch cries to him and to anyone who is listening, staggering up and looking wildly around. Fire, they need a fire: the biggest danger right now is the cold. Without even removing the horse, he sprints out of the house in search of wood, determined not to lose this hope he’s been granted.

 

* * *

 

The fireplace is large enough and the cabin well-built enough that, once it gets going, the fire fills the small, two-roomed cabin with a comfortable heat. That’s the easy part. Once the danger of freezing to death is in the process of being dispelled, another surmounts: Hotch is pretty sure the only reason Spencer hasn’t yet bled to death is because he was too cold to do so, and that’s not a factor anymore.

He moves fast, finding shirts in one set of the dressers in the bedroom and rolling them up against Spencer’s back where there’s a puckered, swollen bullet wound now newly beginning to seep blood once more. The skin around it is a deep purple from bruising once Hotch cleans it up a little with a warm rag, and Spencer barely moves a muscle the entire time. Carefully using Spencer’s weight to press the shirts against the wound, Hotch leaves him there and goes looking for whiskey, brandy, anything he can use to clean it. There’s a still-sealed bottle of brandy in a cupboard filled with letters, so Hotch takes that, standing and pausing as his eyes skim the titles of the books in the shelf above—there. A medical encyclopedia, and he’s honestly not even surprised it’s there once he skims the rest of the esoteric titles. Astronomy, literature, geology, mathematics: if it exists to be studied, there’s a book of it here.

Back to Spencer he goes with the brandy and the book, finding him unmoved and Rabbit still chewing on the soft furnishings. There’s a moment where Hotch realises that if the horse pisses, Spencer’s in real danger of being in the firing line. That’s what gets him up and fighting the animal to try and get him out the door, a fight he quickly realises he’s not going to win when Rabbit digs his hooves in and threatens to lie down right there.

“I don’t have _time_ for you,” Hotch furiously tells the horse, who lays back his ears and makes a dangerous sound around the bit.

“Rabbit…” slurs Spencer from the floor, Hotch abandoning the horse to dive down by his friend.

“Don’t pass out,” he says when Spencer’s eyes flicker. “I need you awake—I don’t read as fast as you need me to read. Do you know what I need to do for you?”

“Rabbit,” is all Spencer says again, moving weakly as he tries to get up. “Need to feed. Brush… where are my shoes…”

Hotch glances at the one boot Spencer is wearing and then, very slowly, puts his hand against his chest. It takes almost no effort to push him back down onto the ground, Spencer feebly fighting him.

“No, don’t,” Spencer chokes out, panic appearing on his features. “I can’t, stop… I need to. I need to look after him, please, please, Tobias, he’ll die…”

Hotch winces. “Stop moving or I’ll tie you down, I swear,” he says, wincing again when he remembers the dog in Spencer’s past. “If you promise to stay put, I’ll look after the horse. And Jack—remember Jack? He’s here too. You just need to stay put and not move and not _die_ , okay?”

“Don’t die,” Spencer parrots, going still and closing his eyes and looking frighteningly dead again. He doesn’t say anything else, which is unsettling since Hotch remembers him as never shutting up, but he swallows those nerves down and stands slowly, hand still flat in the air above Spencer’s chest.

“Stay,” he says again, just to be sure. Despite the fact that turning his back on the man who still needs his help is the hardest thing he thinks he’s ever done—except burying his family, although it feels like the promise of doing it again—he manages it, walking towards the suspicious looking Rabbit and praying that the horse won’t make this hard for him.

 

* * *

 

“Where’s Rabbit?” Spencer asks for the eighth time in a row, his head shifting on his arms from where Hotch has him on his stomach, the shredded remains of the shirt he’d cut off of him now serving to help clean the wound with liberal amounts of the brandy. There’s a second bottle by Spencer’s elbow Hotch had found in the bedroom—that one is getting poured into Spencer via mouth instead of bullet wound, since Hotch is pretty sure the bullet is still in his back and needs to be… not in his back anymore. At least if he’s intoxicated, it will dull the pain of both that and what Hotch suspects is a half-healed broken ankle needing resetting.

“In your bedroom,” Hotch answers patiently for the eighth time. “He wouldn’t go in the stable with Jack, so I improvised. He’s fed and watered and wiped down. Also, he pissed on your rug in there, so enjoy that if you survive this.”

“Hot,” Spencer mumbles.

“Yeah, friend,” Hotch replies quietly, pausing in the cleaning of the wound to brush his hand against Spencer’s cheek, the man closing his eyes and leaning into the touch. “I know. And it’s going to hurt soon too. I’m sorry for that.”

He’s not really. Better hurt than dead.

“Don’t let them take my horse,” is the final thing Spencer says before drifting away, his skin still dangerously pale. He barely has blood left to lose.

Determined to make this fast, Hotch reaches for the pliers and grits his teeth before pulling the skin back with his hand and finding once more the buckled chuck of lead imbedded in there, glad that it’s in one piece. Blood seeps again.

Spencer screams.

 

* * *

 

When dawn breaks, Spencer is still alive, now bandaged tightly and intentionally drunk. Hotch leaves him on the floor in front of the fire rather than risking moving him and tearing the wound any more than it already is. Once Spencer’s a day away from Hotch ripping out the bullet, he’ll move the mattress from the bed down there, pulled back a bit from the fireplace to stop the whole place going up despite the heavy guard in front of it. Right now, he’s as comfortable as Hotch can make him with what knowledge he has, so Hotch is lying beside him with a heavy coat as a pillow and reading the medical book by the light from the lamp beside him. Every minute or so, he drapes a cautious hand across Spencer’s bare chest, checking for a heartbeat before replacing the blanket.

The heartbeat remains, and so does Hotch, drifting off right there beside his friend and for the first time in months hopeful that there might be a tomorrow with him.

 

* * *

 

The days begin to fold into each other, Hotch forgetting why he’s up here above the world in this isolated cabin, the rush of saving Spencer’s life overtaking everything else. When he’s not seeing to the barely sensible man, he’s picking through the cabin finding out more about him, finding books and letters and even a box filled with childish drawings from a younger Spencer. The letters are almost entirely between Spencer and his mother, who Hotch realises must have lived out here with him after he finds women’s clothing in the other dresser in the bedroom, far too old-fashioned to be a wife or girlfriend’s. And the photos and drawings framed around the cabin are of a woman and child, clearly a much younger Spencer with a shy smile and a straight leg. There are none of him post being twelve, which Hotch ponders deeply on the cold, lonely nights beside the sleeping Spencer of today.

He finds letters from Spencer that speak of being at Yale, poring over them and finding ample mentions of both Emily— _I met a girl today, Mother, and she’s the most wonderful person. Much like you, I imagine, filled with spitfire grace and a desire to see the world burn if what is left over is kinder. I think we will be excellent friends, although she assures me she’s never had a friend to date and doesn’t plan on changing that—_ and of the horse— _Rabbit enjoys the stables here very much, I think he has missed being around his kin. You’d smile to see how fast he runs when I allow him to, he’s as brilliant as you said he’d become, and when he runs I feel like I’m home with you, missing you more than ever when he stops._ These Hotch studies intently, wondering how the Rabbit of these letters had become the Rabbit Spencer had stolen in the night, to the horse now locked in the bedroom eating the barest leftovers of feed Hotch had found in a barrel in the stable and split between him and Jack.

Spencer doesn’t wake, at least not completely. He rouses enough to sob from the pain, Hotch using the last of the brandy to try and keep him quiet and still. It’s just enough for Hotch to try get water into him as well, searching the house until he finds a small ladder up into a tiny roof space where there are boxes that tell a story—but most importantly, he finds a bedpan like what they use in the hospital, relieved that he isn’t going to need to move Spencer to either take him out to the outhouse or to clean him after messing himself. And it’s no small blessing that Spencer is too out of it to be embarrassed by Hotch helping him use it, and that he’s just conscious enough to give warning when he needs it.

A fever sets in and the cabin is quiet again after that, as it drags Spencer back into his terrible, dead-eyed sleep. This time, his white skin is flushed pink, lips swollen and beginning to crack. Hotch worries. He considers riding for a doctor before realising that the closest town he knows of is Elko, where the doctors all know Tobias and his bounty. Is it worth the risk leading someone up to this hidden sanctuary, Spencer’s hidden sanctuary, when he doesn’t yet know why he’s being hunted?

But they also need feed for the horses, more brandy to clean the wound, food for them. Hotch resigns himself to leaving Spencer alone, putting it off as long as he can until it becomes apparent he needs to go.

It’s a Monday when he crouches by Spencer and tries to get him to promise to still be alive when he gets back, well aware that Spencer hasn’t actually recognised him yet. And today isn’t the day that he does—he just lies there, silent and angelic at the gates of dying, and says nothing.

So Hotch saddles up Jack and leaves, moving Rabbit to the one-horse stable and hoping some proper food will help him and Jack get along when he gets back.

And then he goes.

 

* * *

 

Emily isn’t there, and Hotch can’t wait any longer. He rides home with both his saddlebags, the sack over Jack’s haunches, and the bags on his own back full. No one had given him trouble as he’d bought what he needed, not even the doctor when Hotch had queried if there was anything he could give him to ease the pain of a gunshot wound.

“Someone been shot, you should bring them here,” the doctor had said, Hotch spinning a tale about an old hermit who wanted to die in his bed where he belonged until the doctor had sighed and, while muttering about idiot miners, given him a small satchel of medicine to take with him. A tonic to ease the fever, some laudanum, a few other pieces. Jack is most excited about the sack of oats, but Hotch carries that satchel like it’s spun of pure gold. He’s told to feed his eccentric old hermit soup, as much of it as he can hunt and make, to feed and hydrate him at the same time where possible.

Back up the mountain they go, having left at sunrise and returning now in the first whispers of darkness. A small part of Hotch has convinced the rest of him that Spencer has died while he’s been gone. That’s probably why he lingers in the stables, wishing he knew how to get a supply of hay up here as he ties Jack and Rabbit to separate sides of the same stall to stop them biting each other and stealing the other’s oats. He stays, patting and whispering to them both, wondering how his mare is faring with Emily until he can’t even pretend that he’s staying for the horses anymore. He finishes brushing Rabbit, pausing when he finds scarring up and down the horse’s legs that remind him of the bites on Spencer’s, before moving inside with the sacks of groceries over his back and his heart hammering a drumbeat to welcome him home.

Spencer’s alive. He’s moved, slightly, now curled with his back to the fire and his hand over his face, breathing deeply. The bandage needs changing, the cabin smells of horse waste, and Spencer’s managed to somehow use the bedpan alone while Hotch has been gone so that needs cleaning—but he’s _alive_. Sunk in that relief, Hotch drops the groceries and carries the satchel over there like he’s delivering some Holy Grail.

“This will help,” he promises, and it does.

 

* * *

 

“Mom died last year,” Spencer says groggily one day, startling Hotch into almost dropping the book he’s reading, one filled with the woman’s writings and musings. “I kept all her things.”

They’re still on the floor in front of the fire, although now on the mattress from the freshly-cleaned bedroom, Hotch able to bank the fire lower now that they have something to lie upon and bedding to warm them both, with him sleeping beside his friend so he can touch him in the night and know he’s still alive. There’s a deep pot of soup on the stove, filled with the vegetables Hotch had bought and the rabbits he’d hunted up here for them, and a partially eaten bowl beside Spencer from where Hotch has been patiently feeding him when he’s too sleepy to object.

“She’s a remarkable woman,” says Hotch. He’s not lying—he can see where Spencer gets his intelligence just from what he’s read and the evidence of the life they’ve lived all around him. “You must miss her very much.”

“I do.” Spencer sighs. “I know you don’t understand, what with how you feel about your mother, but I miss her terribly… I wish you could come with me, help me bury her… I’m just so fucking _alone_.”

Hotch rolls carefully, touching Spencer’s arm and finding it burning. The fever is back, infection just a bad day away, and he swallows hard.

“Who do you think I am now?” he asks.

Spencer doesn’t answer, just cries silently for his dead mother and his loneliness and whatever miserable memory he’s trapped in alone, hands curled tight like he’s still holding a phantom shovel.

 

* * *

 

The grave is in the opposite direction from the river, in a small inlet in the aspens that Hotch finds beautiful even in the fall, yellow leaves creating a golden crown above it. Someone, and Hotch knows who since no one knows this place but the people who’d hidden themselves away here, has painstakingly carved a headstone out of a block of pale wood.

_Diana Dawn Lynch_

_1828-1870_

_In Death, we are Silenced._

He goes back in, finding Spencer staring at the fire, mouth partly open and expression unfocused.

“If the worst comes about and this fever takes you,” Hotch says quietly, every word hurting him innately, “would you have me place you to rest beside her?”

Spencer looks at him, nodding with a seriousness that almost makes it seem as though he’s mindful right now. “The cabin will have to be seen to, if I have died,” he says, his words crashing together strangely like his mind is faltering on how to structure tense and prose. “A thought, a silence… someone to be seen to it…” He coughs and gags on it, spitting bile that Hotch dutifully cleans. “I think Emily would hate it here, away from the world she burns to be a part of… Aaron. Find Aaron.” He coughs again, but Hotch is too startled to catch what dislodges and spills on his lips, thick and yellow and dangerous. “Give it… to… Aaron. He’ll… find himself in the aspens…” Eyes close, eyelids trembling, purple and bruised, his next words faltering. “I dreamed of him here, alongside me. We would make a home, the two of us, and chase away the silence that took her…”

“Oh, Spencer,” Hotch breathes, hurting completely for him. “I’m _here.”_

“I… my headstone. There. Put that upon it…” He waves his hand to a blank pad of paper on a desk, which Hotch picks up and looks at with his eyes burning along with the rest of him. “He’ll find it… he’ll understand. I haven’t lived long enough for meaning other than what he gave me…”

“It’s blank,” Hotch tells the paper more than the man.

“Appropriate.” Despite his bitter word, Spencer struggles up and holds out his hand, taking the pad and a pencil when Hotch finds all the ink has dried. And upon the paper, he writes this:

_We were together. I forget the rest._

“Walt Whitman,” Spencer mumbles, falling back as though it’s taken the last of his finite strength to give this message. “It’s important that Aaron knows…”

“I  _do_  know,” Aaron says. “I’m here, please look at me!”

But Spencer’s asleep.

 

* * *

 

While he sleeps, Aaron finds a copper bath out the back and heats water to slowly fill it, having a bath that’s part searing, part freezing, depending on what half is in the water at whatever point in time. When he’s done, he shaves. Then paces, anxiously checking on Spencer every five minutes, something in his gut telling him that tonight is the night. They always know, he’s been told in the past. The dying always know when their time is up. And if Spencer is feverishly rambling about headstones and his mother, no longer calling for her but whispering of joining her…

When he checks on the horses, he finds a shovel in the stable and notes where it is, just in case.

Then he settles back into the bed, and he waits, counting every shallow breath Spencer continues to take. Every time Spencer struggles awake, rasping for air beside him, Aaron gently spoons soup into his mouth, some small part of him hoping it will give him the strength to make it through this last night. As soon as Spencer drifts away again, Aaron curls close beside him and reads.

Today, what he’s reading is a book of letters between two authors, enjoying being lost in their lives until he turns the pages and paper tumbles out into his lap. Curious, he unfolds them, checking on Spencer before skimming the flourished words. It’s a half-written letter, never finished, addressed to ‘My Dearest William’ and dated twenty-three years ago. Hotch recognises Diana’s handwriting from other snippets of her life he’s found. He realises what this letter is. _I’m afraid to be happy that the most tremendous thing has happened. Is there anything as immeasurably frightening as a child?_

Spencer sleeps soundly as Aaron puts that aside, thinking it over as his brain returns to the puzzle of the stolen horse. It seems a distant trouble, with Spencer unlikely to live to see his bounty collected, but a prescient one right now. Too restless to wait for Death and too nervous of missing Him to sleep, Aaron climbs out of bed and begins to search in earnest, looking for something that will explain how they’ve all gotten here to this hanging valley, waiting for the end together.

He finds what he’s looking for in a lockbox under the bed, picking it with only a tinge of a qualm. Whatever he may find might save Spencer’s life—and the only way it won’t is if Spencer’s life is no longer in need of saving. And here it is, dated the 29th October 1849: an original birth certificate, signed by the presiding doctor and _both_ parents: Diana Lynch and one William Reid.

Spencer’s name is right there: Spencer William Reid. He has his father’s name, and his father is the man who once owned that homestead.

Intrigued, Aaron sets that gently aside and continues digging. Letters spill around his knees, many of them dated before Spencer’s birth and burning his cheeks to glance at when he realises how amorous they are, speaking of illicit love and ardent nights away from the wife the man loathed. _I seek a divorce, my beloved_ , Aaron reads before setting those as far away as possible, knowing Spencer won’t thank him for unearthing the cause of his bastard status. He picks up another, dated when Spencer was barely a suckling babe and finding that it’s filled with the frantic ramblings of a man at the peak of disaster: _she’s pregnant. The church will never let me leave her now. We are dismayed. I have told her about us in the hope that she will seek her own dissolution of our union, but it is not to be._

_I will not let any child of mine grow up a pauper because she is broken-hearted._

_It’s the cruellest of offers I give you, asking you to come live in my home as a tutor to the child she carried… to lie without me in the servant’s quarters and believe me in martial unhappiness within. But you cannot be alone with a babe—and then I may see him grow, from afar, and spoil him in secret. If you would come, I would buy him whatever he dreams of, my dawning light—I would give him whatever horse he chooses to love, fine clothes to grow into, perhaps a college education. They will wonder why I am so eccentric as to spoil a servant’s son, but we will know. Our son will be educated to avoid the mistakes we’ve made. Please allow me to give him this, I know you dream of a beautiful life for him too, without all this painted sadness._

He picks up the letters and takes them with him to the fire, finding Spencer’s eyes open and some focus there, finally. “Hello,” Aaron says simply, sliding into the bed beside him without thinking to ask permission since, by now, it’s such a rote part of his day. “Do you know me yet?”

“You’re Aaron,” Spencer answers, Aaron’s heart stalling out for a moment with the hope of it, before he crushes it once more. “I’m dreaming.”

“You’re not, but we’ll get there.” Aaron sighs, still holding the letters. “I wonder if it would hurt you if I shaved you… you prefer to be clean-shaven.” He’s mostly musing out loud, following the notion that Spencer would prefer to die as himself, but Spencer smiles. The expression is lean on a sallow face, his weight melting from him despite the soup that Aaron is beginning to have a fatalistic kind of hope in. Despite this hope, Spencer hasn’t used the bedpan in a day now, and that’s not a good sign considering how much soup Aaron has been pushing into him.

“I would like that,” he says, over-bright eyes latching onto the letters. “Oh, the tales of my life. What a terribly dull story to read. Mother has _Iliad_ here somewhere, that’s far more thrilling.”

“Why did you steal the horse?” Aaron asks, because it seems time to be learning these things.

“I didn’t steal him,” is the slow response, Spencer seeming to struggle with the words. “He’s mine… he’s always been mine, since he was born. Mother says it’s a secret, not to tell the other boys. And Rabbit knows he’s mine, I ride him in secret even though he’s not to be ridden yet.”

“Okay then, why did Tobias take the horse from you to begin with?”

This seems to stump Spencer, who shakes his head and squints like it hurts. “I… don’t know? Which time? He delights in removing things that people love. He has him in the paddock… he sent Nathan to tell me that if I don’t go get him back, he’ll cut his throat like a lamb.” Spencer shudders, horror rippling over his features. “I don’t want to go out there, no one can hear me out there and Tobias knows how to hide bruises…”

“Not when you were children, Spencer,” Aaron says patiently. “This time, as adults. Why did he take Rabbit _this_ time?”

“He has a dog,” Spencer answers, his face so gaunt with horror that Aaron almost shivers too. “I can hear it barking.”

That slams home, Aaron remembering the boy who’d put his hound on Spencer when Spencer was a child—a child growing up with _Tobias_. “He lured you out there with Rabbit,” he realises out loud. “Because by then you’d gotten too good at keeping away from him, hadn’t you?” Spencer nods, sinking deeper into the blankets with his fingers hooked over the edge and beginning to shiver a little. Hotch moves, building the fire with the new logs he’d just cut this morning before settling back in beside him, touching Spencer’s hand to offer some kind of tangible comfort that’s not the brisk necessity of nursing or washing him. “And then he set his dog on you.”

“And laughed…” Spencer burrows closer, pressing his warm face against Aaron’s face and curling his fingers into his grip, holding his hand with a concrete need. “He laughed and I screamed so loud that he ran in case someone heard me, but no one was there to hear but Rabbit. I’ve never seen a horse kick a dog to death before, but I did that day… and we were two of a kind, me and Rabbit, because the dog bit him too. Marked together so that no one would want us…”

“I thought you told me someone heard you.”

“Rabbit did…” Spencer’s drifting again, and Aaron barely knows anything more than he had at the beginning, not really. “I pulled myself onto him and asked him to take us home, so he did. And here we are, and here you are, and… Aaron?”

The surprise is new. Aaron meets his eyes and finally, _finally,_ sees recognition there.

“Hello,” he says simply, Spencer’s fingers suddenly clinging hard to his shirt as he huddles close and makes a low noise like a sob. “I’ve been here all along. You’ve been unwell.”

“I’ve been dreaming, but I’m not now—am I?” Spencer’s eyes are huge and there’s clarity within them, but fear too. All of it layered by an overbright sheen. “Why are you here? _How_ are you here? I thought I’d buried you with mother…”

Aaron gives him a strange look, understanding that statement despite the oddness of it: Spencer has grieved the loss of him.

Aaron’s grieved Spencer too. It’s a shock to realise that, a thrilling one, and the night stops there. It freezes and falters and leaves them standing still on this hanging valley, far above the mundane world. Up here, there are no Foyets or bounties or men with grudges—simply two souls curled together, one like a candle in a cruel breeze and the other desperately trying to shelter him.

“It doesn’t matter right now, none of it,” he realises out loud, Spencer blinking with such faltering care that Aaron watches his lashes drift with honeyed speed. “You’re still so ill. You might die yet.”

Spencer shudders deeply, looking to the fire. “Despite the burning warmth, there’s a cold claw in my chest,” he murmurs almost to himself. “And the pain… is there anything for the pain?”

The laudanum is finished. If he survives the night, Aaron will go for more on the morrow.

“I’m sorry,” he says for Spencer. For himself, he asks, “May I touch you?”

That earns him a strange stare, Spencer’s expression both lost and confused in that moment. “I think you’ve been doing an awful lot of touching me,” he says with wry acceptance and a nod towards the scrubbed bedpan standing by and his own naked body, as Aaron had finally found it simpler to increase the heat in order to remove his soiled clothes completely. “You must see me as an invalid, a weakling child in need of care…” He moves with agonising attention, gasping at every shift of his aching body as he drags the covers aside to stare with disgust at what can be seen of the scarred leg above the makeshift split Aaron has set his ankle with. “ _Again,_ I’m nothing but a burden.”

“A mind like yours is never a burden,” Aaron says with feeling, sitting upright too and reaching for Spencer’s hand. “When I thought you dead, I was destroyed, but you’re alive… here, still. For now. Let me savour this.” He leans close, Spencer nodding with his pink cheeks and red lips making him appear healthy and downright sensual in the muted firelight, expression rapt.

And Aaron brushes his mouth against the other man’s brow, kissing his skin for the first time with romantic intent. Against his lips, Spencer burns. Even as his hands shift to touch Aaron in return, to draw him closer, he burns. Aaron closes his eyes and savours it, just as he’d asked.

“Aaron?” Spencer’s voice is a whisper, rasping along with the pop of firewood. “Please.”

Aaron leans back to see what he’s asking for, willing to gift this man anything on this terrible, wonderful, infinite night—but no request is made, no permission asked nor granted. Spencer simply leans forward and kisses him upon the mouth, their lips fitting so neatly it seems absurd that this is the first time they’ve been together in such a way. Before he can think to exclaim this, the kiss has deepened, changed. Now it is as heated as the skin against his is, his body burning too as he tries to match the intensity of the dying man seeking to claim dominion over him on this possible last night.

“We should stop,” Aaron finds himself mumbling once, his head dizzy and his mouth sore from the other man’s bedraggled facial hair. “You’ll exhaust yourself.”

“We should keep going,” Spencer pleads. “Ever since we found comfort in each other all those months ago, I’ve dreamed of this, of lying beside you. Of being with you to feel as you did in my hand that night, of seeing the desire upon your face again. Despite the pain, the weakness, I don’t want to die without knowing it—I walked away from you once. I’m not a strong enough man to walk from it again.” His smile turns a little sourer, beginning to shake his head before it appears to make him dizzy and he stops. “Well, I’m not a strong enough man to walk anywhere right now, but I am strong enough to feel my body find bliss beside yours.”

“Sex is the last thing you need—”

“You’re the last thing I need, and this may be my last night to have you,” Spencer corrects, his turn to cup Aaron’s face with his hands, drawing the man down until he can kiss his forehead, pressing his lips there and holding them like he’s trying to hold this moment still. His arms trembling from the effort, his body shivering as though it’s struggling to remain upright. “If we lie together tonight and tomorrow I don’t wake, I’ll have died a claimed man—as far as I’m concerned, these are the sole rites I require to name myself as yours. And if I survive, I can make that a certainty. I can’t marry you, Aaron Hotchner, but there’s no shame in loving you, or keeping you, if you wish to be kept.”

“In God’s eyes, we cannot be what you’re suggesting,” Aaron points out, every part of his heart and soul wishing it was otherwise.

“There’s no God in this valley,” Spencer responds quietly. “There never has been. He never seeks to look here—my father was buried in consecrated ground despite what he and my mother did here with him a married man. I was conceived here a bastard, and no God smote them. Their lives were harder because of it, but that was by the hand of men, and when I lived in this valley, not down on that ranch with church every Sunday and all of heaven’s eyes upon it, I had a father. He would visit and hold me and delight in my growth. In his home, I was a stranger to him, a child who was slapped if I mistakenly called him Father—here? Before and when we were returned, after the dog, he loved me when he was able to slip away to visit. That doesn’t sound godly to me. Something so brokenly human is man’s doing. I aspire to that level of broken—not in his actions, but in his humanity. If I’m to love, let me, and damn what we seem to other’s eyes.”

Aaron doesn’t question him further. To do so would be to doubt the honest truth in his words, to lessen the impact of them, and the only thing he wishes to do right now is exactly what Spencer is asking him: despite the risk, despite the pain, perhaps _because_ of both these things, tonight they’re to love wholly and completely.

“If you die beyond this night,” he promises Spencer after guiding him back down to a safely prone position and kissing him once more, but with a feeling that he hasn’t desired in years, “I’m a man twice widowed.”

Spencer says nothing, his face and body saying it all as he takes Aaron’s hand and refuses to let go, even when Aaron is forced to undress hurriedly with the one hand free. As soon as he’s naked, before regrets have time to settle in, he presses his body to Spencer’s and gasps at the sensation of so much skin, so much living beside him. It seems certain then that this night is forever—one of many. They’ll make a home out here and lie like this many times in their shared bed, building a home that’s so much more than the one Aaron had built on that little city corner because this is _theirs_ and theirs alone, without even God to spy upon it. Aaron’s heart beats hard as Spencer’s beats harder, and they kiss. Mouths finding each other again and again, as though this is the hundredth time they’ve loved instead of the first, they kiss as desperately as they’re able with Spencer bound by his injuries. Hands roam, discovering, exploring. There’s warm skin against Aaron’s palm, the shift of ribs, the concave of his stomach, and then for the first time he’s brushing his hand against another man’s sex and feeling it thicken in anticipation of him. Spencer makes a low noise of pain and, when Aaron looks at him, his expression is glassy and his skin dangerously flushed. Despite how much Aaron desires this night, he pauses.

“It’s too much,” he breathes, sitting up so he’s on his knees beside the prone man, his dick jutting out absurdly despite his momentous concern. “This is too much for you.”

“It’s just pain,” Spencer hisses, trying to move to him and failing with another cry, the skin on his chest turning white and chasing the flush away. “Pain is a constant. There’s never a day I’m not in pain—but my every day since we parted has been without _you_.”

Aaron thinks about this, studying the parts of the other man’s body he knows are fragile before making his choice: he slides his leg over him carefully, straddling him with his full weight on his own knees before bowing to kiss him and rocking his hips down. No weight of his rests upon Spencer; the only points of contact are their mouths, Spencer’s hands coming up to curl around his neck and through his hair, and where their bodies are now hard and pressed together.

Spencer breaks the kiss first, leaving Aaron’s lips damp and warm. “Show me,” he asks, twitching his hip up to feel his dick better slide against Aaron’s, both groaning at the contact. “Show me what to do to love you.”

The full meaning takes a moment to strike: “You’ve never lain with another man?” He hasn’t either, but he has had Haley. “Or woman?” He’s thinking of Emily, but doesn’t say her name. Not yet.

“Only that night with you,” Spencer answers. “I’ve never desired like I have with you…”

Setting aside the strangeness of the man’s body instead of the woman’s, Aaron does as he’s asked. He kisses as though they’re newlywed, every breath he takes apart from Spencer increasingly becoming flavoured with the scent of what they’re doing. One hand he spares to help hold their cocks together, unable to tell which of them is contributing most to the slick spill he’s using to smooth his movements. And when Spencer is a barely motionless, moaning, gasping mess below him, he arches back and lays a line of kisses right down his flushed chest, tasting sweat and dirt and pain and the alcohol he’s been using to clean him, sitting tall on his legs and moving his body hard against the other while still remaining as gentle as possible. He watches Spencer’s face carefully, memorising it: every smile, every shape of his mouth when he groans, every flicker of muscle that gives him away—every part of his body, from his scarred leg to his slender cock to his narrow waist and broad shoulders—Aaron memorises and holds close. They’ll always have this. In this memory, they’ll always be together, even when they’re together no longer.

If Spencer survives the night, he decides, reaching a hand down to hold Spencer’s in his and picturing this thought vividly, he will buy him a ring. Silver, not gold, because silver reminds him of the stars he’s reaching towards, that intangible happiness he’d thought he’d had once and is only just now realising he’d barely tasted.

“Stay with me,” he begs, feeling his body beginning to warn him that release is coming, his spine rigid and muscles tightening. “Come with me.”

 _Don’t go_ , he thinks but doesn’t say as Spencer mouths wordlessly before going terribly, horribly still with his eyes closed and mouth partially open, unmoving for a distressing second that almost stops Aaron’s heart. _Stay._

Hand in hand and hearts in unison, Spencer goes first and Aaron follows shortly after, chasing away their fears with the pleasure of consummation on the night they’ve decided is theirs alone. Both sore, both sticky, with blood staining the blankets from Spencer’s back where he’s twisted against the wound, the exhaustion that follows claims them both without care for any of it. The room smells of musk and sex, so thick in the air that Aaron feels like they’ve defied Death by simply making it impossible for him to not realise what they’ve been doing—surely the rigour with which they love can extend to Spencer living with just as much?

They sleep curled together. The fire burns low.

The cold returns.


	6. The Liar, the Thief, and the Disillusioned

Spencer lives.

There’s a single moment where Aaron fears otherwise, when he wakes the morning following the night they’d spent together, only to find that his bed is both empty and cold. When he sits upright, casting his eyes about to try and spot where his companion has wandered, the room reveals no secrets: just cold air misting from his mouth, the fire almost out, and the windows white with frost. It’s barely morning and, when Aaron dresses quickly in just pants and his coat, he staggers outside barefoot to find the world whitening around him. The sun is smothered by thick snow clouds drifting lower, the air around him quickly reminding him that they’re high in the air and exposed to the weather’s whims.

But the snow assists him right now, despite his freezing toes; he looks down and sees footprints in the fresh layer barely yet covering the ground, leading around to the stables. He follows, already shivering, pushing open the stable door and sidling in to find Rabbit lying down to sleep in the bare stall, Jack threatening to kick, and Spencer leaning against his gelding stroking his leg.

“Jack doesn’t like Rabbit,” Spencer says absently, as though he doesn’t realise how utterly terrified Aaron had been until this moment that he’d crept away to die like a barn cat, trying to spare Aaron the pain of seeing him gone. “Crochety old mule.”

“Like his rider,” Aaron murmurs, walking over there on stiff legs to fall to his knees beside him, drawing their mouths close. They kiss with Rabbit trying to swing his head around to shove between them, Spencer using one hand to fend him off. “When I saw you were gone, I thought the worst…”

“Oh. Sorry. I woke and needed to see him, to make sure I hadn’t dreamed it all…” Spencer looks at his horse, something soft and loving in his eyes. Aaron wonders if he’ll ever look at him like that, or whether he already does but just not when Aaron is also looking. “That’s two times now that he’s saved my life.”

“Apt,” says Aaron, thinking about his rule of threes. “Perhaps don’t go for a third, just in case.” That earns him a small chuckle, both of them quietly sitting there together. Finally, curious, Aaron asks, “When was the other time?”

“They shot me eight miles out from Elko, Aaron,” Spencer says seriously, finally looking at him properly. He looks cold and tired, but very alive, and hope kindles properly in Aaron’s chest—for the first time, he considers that Spencer may very well survive this, and then he believes that consideration completely. “I don’t believe I was conscious for most of the ride home. Rabbit carried me on his own, when I was bleeding and insensible. A lesser horse would have thrown me and left me to die. Not only did he bring me home, but he outran horses years younger than him—without my assistance.”

“Certainly more than Jack has ever managed,” Aaron comments with a wry glance at the mule. “But why risk your life for a horse? If I’d have found you dead, I wouldn’t have felt there was any balance in trading you for him, no matter how great his heart.” Rabbit whuffs as though disagreeing with Aaron’s statement, staring at him with his expression almost reproachful.

“Why not? Who denotes the worth of my life versus his? I’ve certainly never saved a child from a dog, nor have I carried someone to safety and away from certain death. I was there when he was born and knew I would be with him throughout his life, and promised him so—I refuse to have him taken from me, breaking that promise. Mom always did say that horses know when you lie to them, so I’ve made a point never to lie to him. He’s eleven. That’s eleven years we’ve been beside each other. Would you give up on someone you’ve been beside for eleven years?”

Aaron considers that.

“Guess I’ve never had a horse I loved so much,” he admits finally, begrudgingly. And then, because Spencer looks almost disappointed, he adds, “Maybe ask me again in eleven years.”

Spencer eyes him curiously. “Do you plan on hanging around for eleven years?”

“Well, I dunno.” Aaron looks around the stable, eyeing the side wall and the make of the stall. “Seems like we could make room for two in here… if there’s room for two in there.”

And Spencer just smiles, as though there’s sun outside shining instead of the snow.

 

* * *

 

Despite the flurrying snow, Aaron rides that day down to town. It’s Friday, so there’s no hope of Emily, but he desperately wants something to ease Spencer’s pain as well as some more fresh produce for more soup. It’s while he’s buying these items, wandering through the general store, that he finds it: a stall set up with all kinds of packaged seeds, for carrots and corn and wheat and potatoes. After some thought, he buys as many as he can fit in his saddlebags, ignoring the shop keeper’s query about whether he’s planning on planting in winter. He has no real plans for them—they just feel like something that could come in handy… for the future.

He realises with a jolt of surprise that he’s, for the first time since Haley, thinking of a future. Planning for a future instead of going where the work is and being swept by time from town to town. It’s a thrilling realisation and he returns to where Jack is hitched with something that’s almost like a skip in his step.

“Aye, Mr Hotchner,” comes a call, the sheriff ambling down towards him with snow dusting his shoulders. “No sign of that horse thief? Been weeks now.”

“None,” Aaron lies without even considering otherwise. “I’d reckon he’s cleared on out of here, horse too. You’ll be lucky to catch the bastard now.”

“Does seem that way.” The sheriff shakes his head with disgust upon his face, tapping the pipe in one of his hands against his thigh. “Hell of a thing to hit that family, coming on the end of old William passing on. Hell of a thing.”

“Trouble always comes in threes,” Aaron says quietly. Jack is restless, ears flicking up and down and tugging against the rope. With the grim knowledge that he’s asking about Spencer’s father, he asks with careful nonchalance, “Did he suffer long when he died? Mr Reid, I mean. It’s always a terrible thing to see a strong man knocked down by illness.”

“Weren’t so long.” The man glances to the saloon, mouth forbidding. “Right over there, horse threw him. Smashed his head, doc said his brains were right addled from it. Got him home alive but he wasn’t the same after. Drunk as a skunk, of course, he’d been drinking heavily for some time by then. Just rode down here one day last year and climbed into a bottle, ain’t none of us know why except him. Can’t understand it, man had it all, except good sense, I’m afraid.”

Aaron remembers the date on Diana’s grave, and understands completely.

Jack wrenches against the rope with an angry squeal, hoof lashing towards Aaron’s leg. Aaron dodges it with ease, well used to the mule’s antics by now, but almost missing the sheriff’s next words in the process:

“Though there’s whispers that he was mad even before he was dead, if you ask around. Didn’t think it myself, but down at the courthouse they were saying they had to posthumously amend his will, filled as it was with people who don’t exist. Ah well, that’s over now. Guess the horse is gone. Tobias will move on.”

Nodding along but his mind locked onto that, Aaron politely excuses himself and mounts his mule, pushing the animal to a gallop as soon as he’s out of the town. They keep a brisk pace the entire way home—Aaron lost in his own thoughts the entire way with Jack continuously stopping to look back the way they’d come.

 

* * *

 

Spencer takes one look at the packets of seeds and limps outside into the snow despite the fact that the ground is frozen and his ankle is still broken. Aaron follows, mostly to grumble at him that he needs to go back inside but also in case it turns out he needs to be carried.

“You need a cane,” he says, leaning against the fence and watching Spencer drag the foot around as he excitedly tries to figure out where they can put down vegetable patches, perhaps even a coop for chickens or some goats for milk and cheese. “Spencer, I saw the sheriff today in town.”

Spencer stops still, his shoulders rigid and looking sweaty and unwell. “The bounty,” he murmurs, turning and appearing to fold in upon himself. Aaron catches him fast, hauling him inside while still muttering about how stupid he is to be racing around like this when just the night before they’d thought him dying.

“If you move, I’ll tie you down,” Aaron warns.

“It’s not a threat if you’d enjoy it,” Spencer bites back, clearly remembering the last time they’d played with ropes together. Aaron just gives him his fiercest stare before moving off to continue cutting up the vegetables for soup. “Aaron, about the bounty…”

“I shouldn’t have brought it up, or the garden,” Aaron snaps. “You should be resting, not wearing yourself out about plants or—”

“If you’re caught harbouring me, you’ll be hanged beside me,” Spencer says. Silence falls, Aaron’s knife pausing for a second before continuing to snick against the chopping board in a quick, practised rhythm. “If I’m to hang, I want to be alone to do so.”

“Funny. That’s the exact opposite of how I’d have it.” Aaron puts the knife down before turning on his companion, seated awkwardly on the mattress in front of the fire and looking up intently at Aaron. “They’re not going to find you up here. The letters speak of this place as being a secret place, one your father deliberately conspired to keep between just him and your mother—if in twenty-four years, since the year he helped her build this place, no one has found it, what makes you think someone is going to find it now?”

“Elko is bigger, people are ranging further in order to find gold and silver veins. This land isn’t what it was when Father came here. I can’t hide up here until my face is forgotten, not with Tobias having so much business bringing him into Elko these days. Do you really think we can hide forever? He won’t give up—this isn’t about Rabbit. It’s never been about Rabbit.”

“What makes you so sure?” Aaron doesn’t think it’s about Rabbit either, not entirely, but he does think that Rabbit might have been the beginning of it. After all, hadn’t the letter from William himself stated that people would wonder why he spoiled a servant boy so, enough to gift him one of their horses?

“He said as much, when they came to my lodgings in Connecticut.” Spencer winces with the memory, and Aaron remembers the state of him when they’d met. “I was renting out a back room in the building Emily was living in when I received an invitation to meet with my father at a place of his choosing. It was a trap.”

“You didn’t think so when you were lured from your home?” Aaron asks softly.

“Not entirely. You have to understand—no one in Elko has ever known me as Spencer Reid, so how could anyone but my father have been calling for me that day? To everyone apart from him, my mother, and myself, I’m William Lynch. My real name was no secret to me, but it was stressed how important it was that I never tell anyone. And they couldn’t have visited me in my room, seeing as it’s a woman’s lodgings… no men allowed on the premises, lest people think they’re running a cathouse.”

Aaron raises an eyebrow at that, earning a laugh.

“I did say the _back_ room,” Spencer points out. “Emily pulled some strings. If anyone questioned me, she was liable to tell them I was just a particularly ugly lady and then chide them for pointing it out…” For a moment, he looks wistful. “I miss her. When did you say she was to return?”

“Any Monday I’m to meet her. She’s working to clear your good name before news of this spreads.”

For the first time, Spencer expression finally reflects the trouble he’s in, misery etching into the lines around his mouth. “They’ll likely strip my title from me if word connects William Lynch to Spencer Reid,” he comments, his fists tight and posture hurt. “All my degrees, everything I’ve worked for, gone… all for a name. That was what he was angry about that day, Tobias. He and his friends were waiting for me, livid over the discovery that we share a father, that I share his birth name _and_ that I was named for him when Tobias, supposedly the eldest, wasn’t. I hadn’t even known at that point that Father was dead. As to why they felt the need to take my horse and dump me eight towns over with no shoes or money or documents… I assume that was an act of petty revenge. Perhaps Tobias always resented that Rabbit was mine, I don’t know. Whatever the reason, I responded in turn with anger and simply followed them, intending absolutely to take my horse back—and here we are. What else matters except that what’s done is done and, unless you wish to suffer alongside me for it, you should leave?”

“I don’t think it was just about shame or anger,” Aaron argues, ignoring that suggestion. He’s not leaving, not unless Spencer is right beside him and the man is currently in no state to be riding. “The sheriff said your father’s will had people who don’t exist within it, they thought he’d gone mad during the creation of it. I don’t think so—I think you were on it, as _Spencer Reid,_ not as William Lynch. If you’d been placed on it as William, it wouldn’t have been a legal inheritance, since it’s not your true name. Your brothers could contest it and likely win.”

Spencer stares at him. “That makes no sense. A simple search of the birth records of Elko would have my name discovered, I was born here. The church or town hall would still have a copy of my birth certificate lodged there.”

Aaron shakes his head, pieces of the puzzle slowly slotting together for him. “No, Emily said she looked you up as you and found nothing, but she did find a birth certificate listing a William Lynch born to a Diana Lynch, no known father. Which isn’t what I found among your mother’s papers, look.” He abandons the vegetables to rifle though the papers on the desk until he unearths the original birth certificate, striding over to hand it to the exhausted looking Spencer directly. “Think, Spencer—you couldn’t have enrolled in Yale under Spencer Reid with a doctored birth certificate, it would have been discovered. Therefore that’s the true one, and the one Emily found lodged with the hall is the fraud—and your half-brother can make a case for you being a stranger looking to seize your piece of his lands, taking the horse in order to try to stake a claim to legitimacy should you ever show up wondering why you were left nothing.”

But Spencer is staring at the birth certificate, utter shock all that shows on his features. “They erased me?” he asks slowly, looking up at Aaron as the shock turns to fear. “I… how could they have done that? Who would have allowed them to do it? I, but… everything I’ve done I’ve done as _Spencer._ My degrees, my writings, my life—Rabbit’s deed is made to Spencer Reid! They can’t just alter my birth certificate and _erase_ that, can they?”

Aaron hesitates before answering. Over East? He’d have certainly said no, absolutely not. But out here… records are thin. What they do have legally bound and archived is tantamount. And a rich man’s word against a man who has no evidence for the wild claim he’s making, when money is what makes the water here run?

He has a terrible feeling that they can, and have.

“I won’t let them,” he says instead of answering either one way or another.

 

* * *

 

It’s only been a week since the night Aaron had thought he would die, and Spencer is already trying to reach limits that are far beyond his capability. Since Aaron isn’t the kind of person to put his hands on a partner, he’s forced to watch and scowl impressively while Spencer, now clean-shaven, limps around, straining his ankle further by practising his shooting and walking and refusing to do any of the quiet work Aaron suggests.

“I’m not going to darn socks and mend clothes when we could be descended upon at any moment,” he snaps at Aaron one afternoon when he’s painstakingly trying to saddle up Rabbit to see how far he can ride him without falling off; at least, Aaron assumes that’s his end goal. It’s what’s going to happen, anyway. “We need to be ready to flee. Why won’t you take the danger seriously?”

“Because we’re safe up here,” Aaron says firmly. “They’ll never find us. Emily will return with the evidence we need and we’ll clear your good name. You’ll be free to live as the astounding man you are, and I’ll be free to continue to be astounded by you.”

Spencer stops, breathing hard and watching him intently with his arms full of saddle and Rabbit looking bored. “You really mean to fight for my name,” he says, the saddle slipping slightly. Aaron darts forward and catches it, using Spencer’s distraction to ease it from his arms and, resigned, walk it over to help sling it over Rabbit’s back. Using his knee to make sure the animal doesn’t take a bellyful of air, he cinches it, Spencer lingering behind him, and lets his hands feel for damage in the stirrup that Spencer had been dragged from.

“I really mean to,” he says finally, straightening up and checking the bridle as well. He’s not sure about that stirrup—it feels right, but under tension, he’s just not sure. “I’m confident that we can fight this, Spencer.” With a pinch of his heart and a spark of anxious fear, he finally states what he’s been keeping quiet all this time. “Back East, I was a lawyer… degree and all. Did well for myself, made a name. I’ve got clout and the letters after my name to prove it. If I stand in a court and speak for you, that counts for something—and while your letters and documents mean little on their own, with my backing and anything Emily unearths? Especially if we can contact your professors and colleagues? A man can’t be erased, and we’ll prove Tobias to be a fool for trying.”

 _Especially not a man like you,_ he thinks but doesn’t say.

“I don’t like how this saddle is sitting,” Aaron says when Spencer doesn’t respond, wrenching the subject away from the looming bounty. “I’m going to ride him first. At least I have a hope of catching myself if the saddle slips.”

“The saddle won’t slip,” Spencer says patiently.

“It slipped when you were on him. I found it around his belly.”

“Yeah, because I didn’t use the front cinch because I was _rushing_ , because I was committing a _felony_. And I fell off because I was shot in the back. Are you planning to shoot me in the back?”

“If it’ll make you stay in bed, maybe,” grumbles Aaron, earning a dangerous stare. “Hell, it took me god knows how long to drag you back to the land of the living—why are you making it so hard for me to keep you there?”

“I’m not making it hard.” But, despite his words, Spencer has a cocky smile on his face and he gestures innocently to the horse. “Mount up.”

Aaron doesn’t trust that. He looks from Spencer to Rabbit, the latter of which is staring back at him with his ears slicked back and nostrils flaring. That’s not a comforting look on a horse as big as he is. And he logics it through.

“He’s not going to let me on him, is he?” he says finally, Rabbit giving a warning snort when he puts his hand up as though to mount.

“Nope,” is Spencer’s pert reply. “He never lets anyone but me on him. Plus, you have spurs on your boots. He doesn’t like spurs. Tobias used to spur him ferociously, before Father stepped in and gave him formally to me and only me.”

“You have spurs too.” Aaron turns and narrows his eyes at Spencer’s boots, one of which is lifted for his perusal, Spencer wobbling dangerously with the move. It’s the still healing one, the boot fitted awkwardly over the bandaging holding it steady. The spurs are there, but not intact.

“I removed the rowels,” he says quietly. “I can still use it as a riding tool, but it causes no pain.”

Aaron looks at Rabbit, who makes a noise like he’s about to spit all over him if he doesn’t back up, which he does—fast. As soon as he no longer looks like he’s going to mount, Rabbit’s entire demeanour changes, back to calm with his ears up and eyes partially closed, tail flicking placidly.

“Don’t take it personally,” Spencer suggests. “I trained him, and I’m not a very good horseman. Likely he just doesn’t like being given signals from an actual capable rider when all he’s ever known is what me and my leg can give him.” His mouth quirks, almost a smile but also a scowl. “I guess I was lucky my horse was smart enough to adapt to my leg, or else I’d never have ridden him.”

“Guess I’d better take Jack to meet with Emily tomorrow,” Aaron jokes, shaking his head and walking back to lean on the fence. “Alright, get up there then. If you fall off, don’t come crying to me. I’m not helping you.”

Spencer doesn’t fall off but, despite his words, that night when the man finds himself almost senseless with pain as the muscles around the bullet wound in his back protest the strain he’s put them under, Aaron is there. After all, he understands the urge to recover fast, even if he wishes he could show Spencer that there’s no need to force himself to. He’s not going anywhere; for as long as Spencer wants him here, he’s staying.

 

* * *

 

Emily isn’t there when Hotch rides to the meeting place the next day, shivering in the chill air. It’s the last day of October, All Hallows’ Eve, and he wishes he was home in their hidden cabin under the aspen trees listening to Spencer read from history books about the origins of the day. It’s a day that Spencer seems to ascribe more than just the religious value to, and Aaron wants to learn why and how: learn how to celebrate it just how Spencer and his mother used to.

But this is important too, so he waits in the cold until the sun dips down and leaves him standing lonely in the dark and rain. Once it becomes apparent that she’s not here, he mounts Jack and readies to ride home, beginning to worry about her. There are a thousand things that could have gone wrong, a hundred ways she could have been killed or injured, plenty of people out here who’d hurt a pretty woman on her own…

Would he be this worried if it was Spencer out there?

Yes, he decides immediately. His one experience with Spencer off on his own had ended with a bounty on his head and a bullet in his back, so he has precedent for wanting to keep him close. This is nothing about her being a woman, although he wishes she was a woman who he knew a little better and could judge the capabilities of—he doesn’t want to make a move without her only to find that she could have given them the ace they needed, if they’d only waited a little longer.

Before he can follow that train of thought any longer, Jack brays angrily and rears. Aaron rides that out easily, trying to soothe him back down to the ground only to find that he’s limping. Aaron sighs and turns him around, walking beside him the whole way back to Elko and the blacksmith there, cursing the ability of horses—and mules—to throw shoes at the worst possible times.

But it’s fine. He’ll get home, and he’s sure there’ll still be plenty of time for reading together when he does.

 

* * *

 

But the cabin is silent.

“Hello?” Aaron calls, pulling Jack up hard and staring around the empty yard. The stable door is closed, the cabin door too, and everything looks peaceful and calm… except there’s no smoke from the chimney and the wood pile Aaron specifically cut for Spencer to use while he was gone, stacked close to the door and within reach without walking far, is untouched. “Spencer?”

He dismounts, leaving Jack saddled with his reins over his back as he walks carefully towards the cabin, reaching back for his rifle. It feels heavy and strange in his hands, like he’s forgotten how to hold it over this last month of living here as a settled man.

But it’s still cleaned, loaded, and ready. Some habits never die.

He doesn’t call out again. He just walks. Foot by foot to the door that’s closed against him, inching by the wall to peer in low through the window, where someone waiting within won’t be prepared to see his face. Less likely to get it shot that way.

There’s no one inside, not from what he can see anyway. Confused, he pushes the door open and leans in, the cabin as cold as the air outside. Nothing.

Stepping back, he clicks his tongue at Jack to stop the mule wandering off. It’s a quick jog around to the stable, unbolting the door to find Rabbit gone. In that second, his heart slams to a fast stop. Rabbit, gone, his saddle and bridle and blanket too. Aaron just stares, before turning fast with thought of galloping Jack out into the aspens and searching for his companion in case he’s fallen from his horse—perhaps he worried and came after them, and something went wrong? He’s not healed, not even close, and despite trying to hide it Aaron knows that he exhausts easily.

Something tells him to check inside first, properly. Maybe he’s fallen by the now-moved-back-to-the-proper-place bed, that thought says. Or maybe he’s simply asleep, and Aaron can end this fear by crawling in beside him and warming his hands against his spine. With the sun long set and the cold moon overhead, Aaron turns, his ears filled with the creaking of the aspens, the whispers of breezes, and paying no attention to the last thought: the one that has him unconsciously scanning the tree-line, checking every low-hanging branch for a hangman’s noose. Clouds scud overhead, for a moment plunging him into darkness as he walks back around to the cabin door and the darkened room within, Jack snuffling in the grass—then it emerges, bathing the clearing in white and yellow. For another terrifying heartbeat, Aaron thinks he sees it—a dead man in the sky—but the next reveals it as nothing but the shadow of the clothes he’s hung out to air.

Feeling drunk with fear and choking on it, he walks inside. The bed is empty. The floor is spotless.

He lights the oil lamp with a shaking hand, lifting it to cast light upon these graceless walls. Nothing touched. Everything in place. His socks are even folded neatly on the table, set aside when Spencer had darned them for him. Two shirts are there too, likely also mended for want of something to do with his hands while waiting. And it seems absurd that something could have happened while Aaron was worrying about horseshoes and blacksmiths and while Spencer was here mending clothes and tending the house.

There’s paper folded on the shirts. Aaron walks over there, the lamp illuminating what else is waiting there: his old Colt revolver, three bullets placed in a careful line beside it. The paper is a letter, addressed to him in Spencer’s handwriting.

He reads numbly, excepting nothing good.

 _Dear Aaron,_ it begins with. _You must understand why I do this. We can never be what you wish us to be, this glorious life of ours you’re trying to create for us. Do not grieve the potential of it because the potential is a liar, as am I. Everything I told you is false: mine are the doctored documents, not Tobias’s. I came here with the intention of defrauding him. Do you doubt me? You saw how skilled I am at sleight of hand—that’s all I am, a parlour trick. A conman. Emily is my foil. I use her to infiltrate the houses we hit, and then to sow confusion in my absence._

_The man you love does not exist, and I’m sorry for that, because that man—if he did exist—would have loved you dearly. And I’m sorry I cannot be him, but that’s not who I am._

_Thank you for saving my life. I almost thought of asking you to join us, to become outlaws beside us, but when you told me the truth—that you’re a man of the law—I knew it was a false hope. Even if you’d fallen so far as to wish to become like us, I wouldn’t allow it. You’re a man of the light, and I’m nothing but darkness. I told you that, if ever my house of cards falls down, I refuse to see you hanged beside me._

_We were together. You should forget the rest._

_Yours, A Stranger._

_P.S. Keep the cabin. No one will bother you there, and the aspens are glorious in Spring._

Aaron takes a breath. Then another. The word keeps going, even though he feels gutted open and scooped out, left bleeding upon this fucking table.

Silently, he puts the letter in his pocket as a reminder of this moment, picks up his colt and the three bullets, extinguishes the oil lamp carefully, and leaves the cabin without looking back. The door closing behind him is final. Jack watches him curiously.

“Come on,” Hotch says quietly to the waiting mule. “Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

He’s drunk and belligerent, feeling like the mule when he wants to start a fight. The other men around the bar are starting to eye him warily, sensing probably that he’s hoping one of them will act as a vent for that frustration. But the drinks are still coming, still going down smoothly, and maybe if he drinks enough he’ll fall in the piss-soaked gutter like the dog he is.

“I think you’ve had enough,” says the barman carefully, tempting fate. Hotch considers showing him that _he’ll_ be the judge of enough, thank you, and enough isn’t until he’s poisoned himself so thoroughly that his body rejects it all, along with all the kind, pretty things him and that lying filth had done and said.

There’s a small part of him that wants to get up and walk out of here, live up to his bounty hunter name and hunt them down. Either shoot them again or drag them back here to face the law, both the liar and whatever Emily is to him. Then he’ll watch them hang and feel nothing except pleased that he’s cleaned up another of his messes.

But he knows he won’t do that. He hates the man, but he also loves him. He’s not sure what feeling is stronger right now.

Instead of starting a fight, he leaves. He’ll sleep it off under a tree.

The mule stares warily at him as he staggers over there, the street dipping and weaving below him. He almost does as he’d thought and sprawls into the gutter, but stops to sneer at a man who jeers at him and thus avoids that. It takes him far longer to get to the mule than it should have—he assumes the mule is dodging him and mutters something ferocious to the animal—and a truly ridiculous length of time to try and sprawl up into the saddle. Once he’s on, barely, he clucks his tongue and tries to steer.

The mule won’t be steered, not by him, not in this state. He fights Hotch with every yank of the reins, chomping on the bit and braying, hooves clattering. People laugh and Hotch hates them, hates this mule, and for the first time almost understands why some people hit their animals in anger. He won’t though. Not because he’s angry over a lying bastard, not because he’s drunk. He’s not his father, despite his father’s temper burning in him so, when the mule rips the reins out of his hands and sends him sprawling onto his ass in the middle of the street, he stays there. In the dirt where he belongs, listening to the hooves clattering away.

Then, because he got up after Jack and Haley so he can get up after this, he climbs painfully to his feet and follows those hooves. Step by step and each one agonising, he stops to retch against a piss-stinking wall before wiping his mouth and continuing to walk.

He finds the mule in the yard by the sheriff’s stables. Hotch stares, realising that the stupid beast must have leapt the fence to get in there—despite refusing every jump Hotch has ever tried to take him over. In that second, he misses his borrowed horse and hates Emily for taking her. But, over the fence he goes, falling off and yanking a muscle in his shoulder painfully, climbing up and feeling like his entire body has become a bruise. Limping over to the mule, he clicks his tongue and closes his eyes, hearing a horse inside the stable snort. The mule squeals, lashing out when Hotch grabs his rein.

The horse in the stable slams a hoof against the wall, squealing back.

Hotch blinks, watching the mule dance around him out of reach before returning to the stable and shoving his muzzle against a knot in the wood, whinnying in greeting when the horse on the other side snuffles back.

But Jack hates other horses?

Curious now, Hotch looks around nervously, finding himself alone in the early hours of the morning before limping over and pulling himself up to peer through a gap in the overhead wood at the horses below inside the stable. Jack bumps him, making a fretful noise, and he almost slips but just barely manages to cling grimly on.

Soft horse lips mouth at his fingers where they poke over the edge, and he finds himself peering down at the head of his mare, her neck stretched up so she can greet him. She nickers in approval at his sudden appearance, black tail flicking.

“What are you doing here?” he asks her dumbly, feeling drunker than before. Is he dreaming?

But there’s another whinny from within: when Hotch leans further in and sees another familiar head in the stall opposite, the world spins.

“Rabbit,” he murmurs, seeing that flaxen mane in the shadows as the horse shakes his head. His heart sinks: were they caught? If they were, they’ll be hanged and that’s the short of it. There’s nothing he can do except leave and not expose himself to that. He lets go of the wall and pets Jack thoughtfully, his other hand in his pocket, fingers resting on the letter and the heavy weight of the derringer. If they’re who Spencer said they were, they deserve hanging. Likely, they’ve conned a lot of good people out of a lot of good money…

But… Spencer had said he’d never see Aaron killed for what they were to each other. What better way to ensure that then to chase Aaron out of the door?

“Stay here,” he tells Jack firmly, pressing into the shadows of the stables and studying the sheriff’s office ahead. “I’ll be back.”

After all, he’s murdered a man. What’s a little break and enter compared to that?

 

* * *

 

Picking the lock is easy, even drunk, and he’s not surprised that no sheriff waits within to arrest him. After all, the sheriff had told him himself: he’s the only man here. Who’s going to break into a tiny county gaol? Except him, of course.

The cells are ahead and he keeps low as he creeps towards them, finding the first empty. Curious, he peers into the second, seeing a huddled shape on the bed against the wall. He clears his throat gently, watching as the shape jerks up and, in the barred moonlight streaming in, reforms into dark hair and dark eyes on a bruised face.

She sees him and launches up, beside him in seconds with one hand wrapped around the bars, the other hanging uselessly by her side.

“You’ve been beaten,” he says uselessly.

“They’ve got Spencer,” she says fast, ignoring him. “You have to help him—you have to save him! They’re going to hang him at noon.”

Hotch closes his eyes and sways, hearing her make a slow sound of realisation as she realises that he’s drunk—but sobering up fast as his brain clicks onto the enormity of the situation.

“I don’t know if I believe any of you people anymore,” he admits finally, opening his eyes and staring her down, wishing he knew some way of just _knowing_ from her words or her behaviour whether she was lying to him or not. “How do I know you’re not just the liar he says you are?”

“What?” she asks, staring at him incredulously. “How can you say that? I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Perhaps rightfully,” he responds. That seems to shut her up, as she lets go of the bars and takes three staggering steps back, like he’s punched her square in the stomach and knocked all the wind from her. Like he’s given her hope and then ripped it away.

“They’re going to hang an innocent man!” she says. “How can you condone that?”

“Because he’s _not_ innocent!” He pulls the letter from his pocket, waving it at her despite the darkness meaning it’s impossible for her to read. “I have his letter here! He lied to me, and so did you!”

“I never lied,” she says, but turns away from him anyway. He stares at her back and wishes he could believe her, wishes he was the kind of man who could open himself up gleefully to that kind of hope. But he’s not, and he can’t survive another blow. He’s barely clinging onto life as it is— “If you’re going to let us be killed, at least take Rabbit… God knows that fucking horse doesn’t deserve to die too.”

What?

“Is the horse a conman too?” he snaps with a rare show of dark humour. “You expect me to believe they’re going to, what? Hang—”

“Believe me, don’t believe me, whatever. But there’s proof on that desk, right there. I watched them give him the telegram from that fucking piece of shit Tobias Reid—he wants Rabbit shot. Honestly, I’m surprised he doesn’t want to do it in front of Spencer, but I guess he got pissed off when he hit Spencer and the horse kicked him… would have shot them then, if the sheriff hadn’t stopped him.”

Hotch walks over there, lighting the lamp on the table and, quickly and aware that time is ticking on, skimming the papers there. And, there it is near a scribbled note asking ‘telegram Reid ask about horse’ is the telegrammed reply:

> **SHOOT IT**

The keys aren’t there but he doesn’t need them, picking the lock on the cell as easily as he’d picked the door, Emily watching him silently the entire time. It’s not until the door is open and she’s hobbled out beside him that she asks: “Why?”

“Why would they order a horse shot that he put a six-hundred-dollar bounty on?” Hotch points out calmly, his whole world sinking into place once more as order reasserts itself. “They wouldn’t. Not unless they want to hurt the man who loves that horse, or to scour his memory from this earth entirely.”

“I did tell you,” she says, following him to the door. “What now?”

“We stop them from hanging an innocent man.” He looks out, checking that the stables are clear. “How good are you at stealing horses?”

And she laughs, responding, “Nowhere near as good as advertised, but always willing to learn.”

 

* * *

 

Their plan is simple. They’re not going to stop an execution without proof; fortunately, proof is exactly what Emily had been in the process of riding for when Tobias’s thugs had caught her.

“The doctor who presided over Spencer’s birth is one town over, a three-hour ride,” Emily tells him as they close the stable door carefully before beginning to unbolt stall doors. “Straight North as the crow flies, do you know it?”

“I know it,” he confirms.

She’s leading out Blackbird, the mare quiet as though she senses the importance of this moment. “Rabbit’s the fastest of them,” she says, looking at the horse he’s leading. Neither of them have saddles or bridles and there’s no tack kept in here. They’ll be riding bareback, unless Hotch moves Jack’s gear to Rabbit—which would leave Emily with no way to lead him. He’s already planning, because he already knows what she’s going to say they have to do: “One of us needs to stall them. The other needs to ride like hell to get that man. He delivered most of the people here around that time, there will be people who believe him. That’s all we need, a shred of doubt. Someone trusted who can confirm that he’s who he says he is. You get that doubt, the sheriff will back you.”

“The man who beat a woman in his care?” Hotch questions disbelievingly.

She shakes her head. “The man who _stopped_ them beating a woman in his care,” she amends. “They were going to do worse before he rode in. He’s the only reason I’m as together as I am, and he stopped them shooting Rabbit on the spot, from what I heard. He doesn’t like Tobias—give him a reason to bring this whole farce to an end.”

Hotch looks at Rabbit, who flattens his ears.

“Alright, friend,” Hotch says to the horse, reaching down with one hand to tug off his spurred boots and toss them aside. Rabbit watches, eyes narrowed, Emily staring blankly at him like he’s gone mad. “We’re going to save your rider, if you can show me that you’re a good enough horse to be worth all this.” Taking a deep breath and making sure to linger there long enough that Rabbit can see he’s bootless and no threat, Hotch walks to his side, places his hands onto that wide, deep back, and then mounts with one smooth movement, settling into his seat. Rabbit’s skin twitches below him, his hooves shifting uncertainly and his ears flicking around to listen to what Hotch is doing… but he doesn’t buck. He doesn’t rear, he doesn’t bite, and when Hotch squeezes his knees gently, he even slowly begins to move forward.

Emily gets the door, grabbing Jack’s reins when he pokes his head through and holding them as she mounts Blackbird with just as much ease. Ahead of them, the gates are open, Jack and Blackbird nibbling happily at each other and Rabbit rigid with tension as though he knows that they’re about to ride for their life. Three hours there, three hours back, and Spencer—by the growing light of the morning—has less than five hours to live.

“The doctor’s name is Albert Hawthorn,” Emily says, also staring at that sun. “You’ll get to him in time, won’t you?”

“Absolutely,” Hotch promises her, sliding his holstered Colt from his belt and handing it over to her. “Emily?”

“Yeah?”

He nods to the Colt. “There’s three bullets in there,” he says mildly. “If they’re going to kill him, use them.”

And, with those words, he cements his future: he’s saving the man he loves, come hell or high water, no matter how much blood it costs him. Emily just nods, and Aaron urges his own horse forward, the first to burst from those gates as Rabbit goes from a standing stop to a gallop seemingly without any in-between. Aaron stays low, stays deep, and as they go, he closes his eyes and murmurs, “Run, Rabbit. _Run.”_


	7. The Hanging on All Hallows’ Day

They ride like the demons of Hell are upon their backs and, for Aaron, in a way they are. He’s not fleeing something now but racing something—Death upon his pale horse gallops beside him and, for every stride of Rabbit’s, that horse takes two. Above their heads, spindly lines of daylight break through the thick cloud cover, illuminating the world around them starkly as though to cheer the occurrence of this day.

Unless Aaron can stop it.

He begs Rabbit to run like he’s never run before, to run like he had when he was barely a yearling and saving Spencer from the dog, to run like they had the night Spencer was shot—to run this time, a third time, like the third bullet Aaron has always fancied will save his life. But he barely needs to beg, because Rabbit seems to know and the ground vanishes below them, eaten by the long-legged stride of a horse that’s so much more than he seems, just like his rider.

They ride and they ride and they ride until Aaron is aching and Rabbit is blowing, foamy sweat coating his dark, dark coat, and still the sun keeps rising. Somewhere, Spencer is sitting watching that sun and wondering if it’s the last one he’ll ever see—Aaron pictures him with a noose over his head and, somehow, squeezes a tiny shred more of speed from the horse.

It’s a three-hour ride; they make it in just under two, cantering down the middle of the street with Aaron hollering for anyone who is listening: “Get me the doctor, Doctor Hawthorn, now!”

 

* * *

 

They get him Doctor Hawthorn, but there their good luck ends. With a stable boy giving Rabbit the water he desperately needs, Aaron stands in the doorway of the doctor’s home and stares blankly, uncomprehendingly, at what he’s run this whole way to reach.

“It’s a sickness of the brain,” the nurse paid to sit with him says, shaking her head at the insensible man sitting in his chair with a knitted blanket around his knees and no recognition in his filmy eyes. “Happened about three years ago. He doesn’t remember breakfast, I doubt you’ll be getting anything else from him.”

“But…” Aaron sways, his head thumping twice and almost bringing him to his knees as his stomach rebels. He rode all this way, possibly hurting Rabbit to do so… and for this? For nothing? More false hope? “He _needs_ to remember, you don’t understand—”

“I don’t think you understand, sir,” the nurse says firmly, arms crossed. “This man is ill. He has no memory to speak of. Whatever you need of him, he cannot give it, no matter the importance.”

“A baby,” Aaron cries frantically. “He needs to remember a baby, a child he delivered—”

“He’s delivered many babies, many children. Why, half this county found themselves kicking and screaming in his hands—”

“—in a hidden cabin in a hanging valley. Do you know what that is? It’s a valley in a glacial canyon, and this one is filled with yellow aspens in October, which is when it was. Twenty-three years and three days ago _exactly—”_ With a numb feeling of realisation, he notes that they’d missed Spencer’s birthday, tucking that aside to grieve later: “—he delivered a baby in that cabin, in that valley, and he did so in secret because the parents were unmarried—”

“Disgraceful,” the nurse mutters, looking scandalised.

Aaron ignores her. “Please,” he says weakly, and now he has lost his legs. Like he’s begging, or praying, he lets his knees hit the wood and begs of anyone listening. “You _must_ remember. His name is Spencer Reid, his mother is Diana Lynch and William Reid, the landowner with shares in the mining company over in Elko, you _have_ to remember him! If you don’t, he’s going to die. Don’t you understand what a loss that would be, all because of a fucking _secret—”_

“Lamoille Canyon,” says a new voice, a woman’s voice. Aaron looks up, ashamed to realise that there are tears in his eyes as he pre-emptively despairs. But a woman with white hair pinned up savagely against her head is standing in the doorway, her chin high and expression haughty. “Unlike my husband, my memory is exceptional. You’re talking about Lamoille Canyon, the baby boy born there. I remember him. I was his mother’s midwife, and also the woman who helped that man on the chair there stitch his leg back together into some semblance of a leg after that no good mongrel Tobias Reid had his dog maul it. Although, I recall they’d changed his name by then. William, instead of Spencer, and we weren’t to question it.”

“Yes,” Aaron breathes, hope flaring. He staggers up, reaching out a hand. “Please, yes—I need you to come with me. He’s going to be hanged if you don’t—Tobias is going to finish what he started with that dog, and you’re the only person left alive and sensible enough to tell them otherwise.”

“Roma, what are you—” the nurse splutters, but the doctor’s wife has already reached for her shawl.

“Telegram Elko ahead,” she informs the nurse as she strides past Aaron with barely a pause. “Stall them—tell Sheriff Musk that he’ll have hell to pay if they kill that boy without hearing me out. Do you have a horse, boy? None of ours are fast, not anymore.”

Aaron looks at Rabbit, now saddled and bridled and waiting with his sides moving steadily, his wind regained. But he’s eleven years old, nearly twelve, and he’s been running him all morning, now to ride him back just as fast but with double the weight…

“I do,” he says finally; there’s no other horse he’d trust for this.

“Is he fast?”

And Aaron answers, “The fastest, ma’am.”

 

* * *

 

They have the fucking noose around his neck when they gallop in, Rabbit screaming with exhaustion and rage when he sees Tobias standing there gaping at them. Aaron can barely talk, so sore and panicked by seeing the wide-eyed terror in Spencer’s eyes as he stares at his horse, two men trying to hold him still to stop him from wresting free of their grip. It’s not even a proper gallows they’re hanging him on: it’s just a tree with the noose thrown over it. Aaron almost screams at them with the horror of that. That’s not a hanging—it’s a murder. Letting the person choke to death slowly, the noose tightening incrementally with every crushed breath the victim manages, right up until they pass out. No kindness in a snapped neck, no pretence of righteousness: just a gaggle of men around a hangman’s tree, with a gagged man waiting to die.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” screams the doctor’s wife as soon as she’s dismounted, throwing her shawl aside and striding over there while Aaron is fighting to stop Rabbit from plunging into the crowd, completely stunned by her incendiary reaction. “You unhand that boy right now! Musk, what is this! This is a _lynching_ , in Elko County!”

“This man is a horse thief, ma’am,” says the sheriff from where he’s standing right back from the proceedings. “The law gives them the right to hang the man responsible for the taking of their animal.”

Aaron snaps back to himself, tearing his eyes away from where Spencer is still in danger of being accidentally strangled by the noose and looking around the paddock where they’re doing this, on Tobias Reid’s lands. There are three distinct groups—the centre one that the wife is pushing through is armed and ugly, their weapons clearly ready to be used. They’re riled up and dangerous and only out for blood. Outside them are the curious, pushed easily aside but adding a dangerous level of normality to the whole thing.

Outside them, the faces are furious, there’s an air of horror, and several of the women are crying. Aaron see bloodied noses among the men, none of them armed.

“You’ve been lied to,” Aaron calls, using the voice he used to use in the courtroom, still atop Rabbit and the horse’s height giving him the range he needs. “This man’s name is not William Lynch—it’s Spencer Reid, and he’s the son of William Reid. He never stole this horse—it was given to him by his father.”

There’s a ripple of discomfort, the doctor’s wife finally managing to make her way through the crowd and lunging for Spencer, two men not currently holding Spencer in place grabbing her arms. The sheriff straightens at that, his expression darkening.

“Get your hands off me right now,” she hisses dangerously. “Everything that man says is true—Tobias, you scoundrel, you’re about to murder your own brother!”

“He stole my horse,” Tobias answers blandly, staring still at Aaron with nothing but hate in his eyes. “As I see that man has also. An interesting approach to delivering a bounty, Mr Hotchner.”

“Every man deserves a trial by law—the true law,” Aaron snaps back, letting Rabbit have his head a little and watching how the crowd moves back from his dangerous legs and stomping hooves, his eyes rolling as he squeals again. “Not whatever this farce is. I swear, by my oath as a registered lawyer, if that man hangs, I won’t rest until every single person here today is brought up on charges of murder and complicity before a genuine court—I will ruin each and every one of you, beginning with you, Mr Reid.”

There’s a rough sound by the tree, Spencer jerking his head back. Aaron drives Rabbit forward, scattering the crowd—and sees Emily kneeled there, gagged as well and with someone holding her there by her hair.

“Let her go,” he says treacherously, knowing he can’t reach for his rifle without starting something that will end with them all shot.

“She shot at me,” Tobias answers. He’s the only one still looking cocky, everyone else looking from Aaron to the approaching sheriff, his hand now on his own gun. “Why, a man is entitled to protect himself on his own lands.”

But the doctor’s wife has wrenched herself free, moving down to Emily and, with a savage glare at the man holding her that has him releasing her and backing away fast, removing her gag. “Striking a woman,” hisses the doctor’s wife, Emily shaking her head as though dizzy as she staggers up.

“These aren’t his lands!” she yells, loud enough for everyone to hear, pointing to Spencer. “They’re his—his father left them all to him. That’s what you’re allowing, you idiots—it’s all over an inheritance! That’s what I was trying to _say_ , before he tried to shoot me!”

Shocked silence. One of the men holding Spencer lets go. That’s not entirely a good thing—they’re the only things stopping the short noose from snapping tight and Aaron sees his eyes widen over the gag as his weight pulls down against the rope now he’s unsupported. Aaron is close enough now that he has to hold Rabbit’s reins tight, lest the horse lunge for Tobias out of sheer, savage hatred. Just a few feet more and he can grab him himself…

“Get him down, now,” the sheriff is calling, people beginning to back away, putting arms down. Aaron relaxes, catching Spencer’s eyes and risking a tight smile. They’re going to be okay. “I want his feet on the ground now. We’re sorting this out properly, like people instead of animals. No more of this.”

Aaron’s still looking at Spencer, so he doesn’t see the moment when Tobias draws his gun: it’s Rabbit who reacts with a scream, plunging forward and grabbing the man’s arm in his teeth as the bullet fires. It misses Spencer by inches, striking the man beside him—and, as that man crumples to the ground with a cry, Spencer drops, the rope snapping around his neck.

Aaron barely has time to think. He throws himself from the great height of the horse’s back, barely keeping his feet as he vaults towards where Spencer’s feet are kicking at the ground, his eyes bulging, gurgling horribly as the rope tightens—and then Aaron has him, lifting him with one arm as the other unloops the rope. Other people are rushing up and he’s distantly aware of the doctor’s wife helping him lower Spencer to the ground—but, somehow, his ears hear the tiny snick of a revolver’s chamber turning.

He doesn’t even go for the rifle. The hand in and out of his pocket is as smooth as if he’s been shooting like this since he was a babe, the derringer firing beautifully despite this being the first time. His mother was wrong: one bullet does just as well as three. Tobias falls, the small bullet hole square in his head and Rabbit rearing to slam his hooves down on the hated shape of him before three men working in unison manage to drag him away.

Dead, and Aaron knows it. Worth nothing now, if he ever was.

If Aaron was the type anymore to wonder the worth of a horse versus a man, Rabbit was worth eight of that man easily. He turns back to Spencer, finding him hunched over with his hands on his throat and his eyes locked on paper that’s fallen from Aaron’s pocket and is now under his knee.

“I lied,” he rasps through a bruised throat, looking up at Aaron with those amazing, _alive_ hazel eyes, still both of those things.

“Oh?” asks Aaron.

“Yeah.” Spencer coughs, accepting the water someone gives as, behind them, chaos reigns. “When I said the last thing I wanted was you beside me as I was hanged… turns out that that was a pretty fantastic thing to have.”

And Aaron can’t do anything but laugh, dragging him into a hug that lingers a little too long despite their audience.

 

* * *

 

In the chaotic time after, Aaron works tirelessly to do exactly as he swore he’d do and in a far less dramatic manner than galloping into town on an enraged horse: he clears Spencer’s name. It’s not hard. William was a flawed but diligent man, and once the documents that he stored within his own private accounts—without giving access to his sons—are retrieved, the forgeries in those made public become apparent.

The original will is recovered. As it turned out, with Aaron poring over it carefully to ensure every word is down in triplicate, he’s left everything to Spencer and Spencer alone. Everything. Every share, every acre, every cow. The house, the servants, everything. For a few days, Spencer is—theoretically—the richest man in Elko County, and the family who never cared to know about him are suddenly living on the back of his charity. Aaron informs them coolly that, if Spencer wished, they could all be thrown out onto the street.

And that’s in the will too. _Do as you please with the inheritance you’ve been denied,_ says William’s final words. _For not a cruel twist of fate, my meeting who I believe was my soulmate after I was already married, you would have been my first trueborn son and it is my greatest regret that I never announced to the world that you were so. I was worried about the world rejecting you and you resenting it for that—I see now, as I have watched the kind, clever man you’ve become despite your hard upbringing—that you would have not have been rejected. Perhaps at first, but no one who knows you could hate you for long. But by my actions, I never gave you that chance and, because of that, your life was darkened by the treatment my family inflicted upon you, especially my sons. In penance, I hand their wellbeing to you. As they once lauded over you that they held your fate in their hands, with ropes and dogs and horsewhips, now you hold their fate in yours. Do with them as you see fit and let no one but God judge you._

Spencer is very quiet when that part is read to him. William’s wife is in the room, silent and stunned and saying nothing as this all sinks home, her eyes going wider and wider as she realises that she’s penniless unless this man hands her some scraps. Aaron isn’t sure how he feels about it all. Perhaps it’s a penance of a kind, but it’s not anything Spencer would have ever done, this cruel game from beyond the grave.

“This isn’t about me,” Spencer says finally, placing the will down gently and standing, looking around his father’s office—his office. “None of this is about me. He’s getting revenge for how miserable you made him in life, knowing that he wanted to leave you and forcing him to stay and suffer for every minute of it.”

“I knew there was a child,” the wife stammers, looking from Spencer to Aaron to the other men assembled in the room to witness this moment. Even Emily is there, quietly watching Spencer and paying no attention to anything else happening. “I didn’t know it was you, I didn’t. I… suspected. He was so kind to you, and I suspected… but I didn’t _know.”_

“You knew,” is all Spencer says, looking now to Aaron. “You’re the one who taught them the knots. Aaron, let’s go. I don’t want any of this, not a cent. They can have it all—except Rabbit. He’s _mine_ and he always has been, and he’s the only kind thing that’s ever come from this damnable house.”

He turns and walks out without looking back, Emily and Aaron following without surprise in either of their expressions: this, this is Spencer. Not that back there. And Aaron’s glad for it.

“Where are we going?” Aaron asks mildly, hearing the explosion of voices behind him.

Spencer answers, “Home.”

 

* * *

 

They make their home among the towering aspens and here there are no ghosts to haunt them. The souls that rest here are at peace, both those that lie below the ground and those who walk above it. Beside Diana’s grave, they place two more markers made out to Jack and Haley Hotchner: now that he’s no longer running from his past, Aaron is finally ready to face them. And he’s sure they’d be glad to see him happy.

He writes a very important letter, thanking the man who let him borrow his horse. In there, he details exactly what that borrowed horse led him to. He tells his friend, in no uncertain terms, that what he’s found on that borrowed horse is something he never expected to find again, and he tells him that the mare has become a borrowed horse to yet another lost soul, who will hopefully find her purpose too. Despite knowing that it will be years, if ever, until he sees David Rossi again, he wants him to know exactly how immeasurable his impact is. Once done with that, he speaks of the home they’re building together in the hanging valley, the plants they’ll grow and the animals they’ll raise and the life they’re planning on living. He assumes that Rossi is smart enough to read between the lines: it’s here that I plan to stay, forever.

Emily visits sometimes on her borrowed mare, appearing without warning and leaving just as quickly. Spencer assures Aaron that she’s happier out West than she had been over East and under the thumb of her dictatorial mother determined to turn her into proper society. Emily declares that she likes it at their valley just fine, although Aaron suspects that’s because they don’t judge her for her penchant for wearing pants. Or perhaps because, out here, it’s very much like actually living.

Spencer writes, Aaron farms, Emily visits: they’re gloriously happy and that’s almost all there is to it.

Almost.

 

* * *

 

Spencer’s tied to the bed and it’s a resplendent sight. Aaron admires it for a moment before bowing his head down and bringing his mouth to the dick presented to him, enjoying every restricted twist and buck of Spencer’s body against him. Only one of his legs is tied but they can pretend, the other too easy to damage with a sudden jerk to risk it. When Aaron pulls away, sliding down the bed to kneel between those splayed legs, he takes a moment to run his hand along the ragged scarring on Spencer’s bad leg, slowly moving his palm down until he’s touching the barest tips of his fingers to the slightly crooked ankle. Spencer huffs out a breath, but allows it. This is all about being vulnerable to each other.

“I have a question,” Aaron says, climbing up into the bed with Spencer and straddling him, hands smoothing down the chest that’s filled out now they’re healthy and happy and home. Outside, Rabbit nickers angrily at Jack, who is no doubt eating his oats again having worked out how to work the newly embiggened stable to his advantage and open his own stall door in order to reach Rabbit’s.

“Mm?” Spencer hums, looking flushed and aroused and not at all like he wants to stop to discuss anything that isn’t them touching each other, right now, without pause.

“If I was to ever hogtie you,” Aaron murmurs against his lips, leaning down to kiss him between statements: “Do you think you could escape the ropes before I finished you?”

“Why would I even _want_ to?” is Spencer’s response, arching once more against the ropes. Aaron catches his hand, the silver rings they wear glinting together: together in every way that matters to them.

“Something to consider,” Aaron answers, taking them both in hand and enjoying that, this time, nothing except the ropes he loves to see on Spencer stopping them moving against each other. By the time they’re insensible, so close and ready to tumble into rapture together, the ropes are loose and Spencer has freed himself—but neither of them care. They’re far beyond caring about anything other than each other.

And this continues, ad infinitum.

 

* * *

 

In the morning, Aaron rouses second, finding Spencer sitting in the window with a book in hand and a far away look in his eye, Rabbit with his head poking through getting a scratch between the ears. Aaron joins him, sore between his legs and noting with glee the rope burn on Spencer’s wrists, scratching Rabbit’s neck and hoping Jack doesn’t see.

“What shall we do now?” he asks Spencer absently, considering perhaps he’ll point out that the chicken-coop needs fox-proofing or the roof needs work. Instead, what he says is this:

“Oh, I don’t know,” he murmurs, closing his eyes and smiling. “How about the rest of our lives?”

**Author's Note:**

> I love to hear from you guys. Leave a comment or come chat with us on the [Criminal Minds Discord server](https://discord.gg/kPxKjaE) (don't be shy by how quiet we are--we love new people to talk to!). I also run weekly rewatch threads both on the server and over at the /r/[criminalminds on Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/criminalminds/), so come along and join in the small community there. Hope to see some new faces!
> 
> Very important question: since everyone in this fic is in cowboy clothes, does that mean they're ranch dressing?


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